Barton Pine Corelli

Contemporaries, amicable friends, and even mutual admirers, the legacies of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Clement could not have ended up being more different. In fact, Clement's name is little known today save for music history buffs who recognize the close relationship he had with Beethoven and are aware that Beethoven wrote his Violin Concerto with Clement in mind. Violinist Rachel Barton Pine is heard on this Cedille album playing these two closely intertwined concertos with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Jose Serebrier. In fact, this recording represents the first for the Clement concerto, a work that has remained essentially dormant for almost two centuries.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine’s lifelong love of the blues, combined with her determination to uncover and commission works by black composers, has led to this album of pieces soaked in the blues tradition of the 19th-century Deep South. From the riotous opening “Blues (Deliver My Soul)” by David Baker to Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s bold Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin and Errollyn Wallen’s modernist “Woogie Boogie,” plus music by Billy Childs, William Grant Still, and more, it’s a dazzling, sophisticated collection. Barton Pine has this music in her blood, and she relishes the blues’ rich vein with playing of rhythmic freedom and ravishing beauty—and an incredible sense of fun.

The re-release of The English Concert’s award-winning recording of Corelli’s Op 6 concertos offers a welcome opportunity to reflect on some of the changes in taste that have emerged since 1989. Two competing recordings, by groups led by Italians – that of Ensemble 415 and Europa Galante – oblige with two quite different approaches to this most quintessential of Baroque music.

The English, historical-instrument, Baroque ensemble La Serenissima (the term was a nickname for the city of Venice) has specialized in somewhat scholarly recordings that nevertheless retain considerable general appeal, and the group does it again with this release. The program offers some lesser-known composers, and some lesser-known pieces by famous composers like the tiny and fascinating Concerto alla rustica for two oboes, bassoon, strings, and continuo, RV 151. What ties the program together formally is that it covers a range of Italian cities that were becoming cultural centers as they declined in political power: not only Venice (Vivaldi, Albinoni, Caldara), but also Padua (Tartini), Bologna (Torelli), and Rome (Corelli). There are several works by composers known only for one or two big hits, and these are especially rewarding. Sample the opening movement of Tartini's Violin Concerto E major, DS 51, with its unusual phrase construction and daringly chromatic cadenza passage: it has the exotic quality for which Tartini became famous, but it does not rely on sheer virtuosity. That work is played by leader Adrian Chandler himself, but he also chooses pieces for a large variety of other solo instruments: the Italian Baroque was about more than the violin. Each work on the album has something to recommend it, and collectively the performances may make up the best album of 2017 whose booklet includes footnotes.