Boccherini

The most comprehensive collection of music by Luigi Boccherini ever issued, 52 CDs brimming with charm, elegance, wit and catching melodies!- Born in Lucca, Italy, Boccherini (1743-1805) demonstrated prodigious musical talent early on, studying in Rome and later moving to Vienna to continue his musical education. He became a virtuoso cellist, and his compositions reflect a deep understanding of the instrument's capabilities.

Sweet, intimate, and very dry, Fabio Biondi's of Boccherini's Guitar Quintets with players from Europa Galante and guitarist Giangiacomo Pinardi is ineffably charming, but possibly too etiolated for some taste. But it has the feel of polished oak and such a wonderfully evocative sense of place and time that it is hard not to fall for Biondi and Boccherini. Much of the appeal, of course, is Boccherini's music: filled with luminous light and most tender affection, Boccherini is the chamber music equivalent of the young Goya, and it would take a hard heart not to be beguiled by Boccherini's La ritirata di Madrid or swept up in his wonderfully stylized Fandango. Biondi and Europa Galante may be fay, but they match the music's delicate delights. Virgin's sound is close but with a sense of space around it.

For a work in C major, the initial theme of the first Op. 60 quintet is especially haunting and strange. As it turns out the source of this tune is a lullaby from Madrid. In the hands of this old master, though, who faced poverty and poor health by the time of these works (circa 1801), the lullaby feels like a funeral dirge (anticipating Mahler's first symphony by 87 years). The entire first movement feels very agitated, which was off putting the first few times I listened to this CD, but it has since grown on me. This is not the flowery Boccherini of early years, instead we find the music of an increasingly broken man.

The most comprehensive collection of music by Luigi Boccherini ever issued, 52 CDs brimming with charm, elegance, wit and catching melodies!

Boccherini's stature as a great composer stands chiefly on his works for cello - these concertos, the cello sonatas, and above all the quintets for two violins, viola, and two cellos. The two performances by Tim Hugh and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, produced by Naxos, may not set the bar for interpretive brilliance, but Mr. Hugh plays beautifully, with excellent tone in his highest passages, and the price is right. If you haven't given Boccherini a listener's chance, these two CDs, sold separately, might open your ears.

Supremely lovely and deeply beautiful, the performances on this two-disc set devoted to the music of Luigi Boccherini are compelling proof that the Italian-Spanish composer was more than a Rococo bantam weight. Beyond his well-known Minuet, Fandango, and "La Ritirada di Madrid" and his enormous number of cheerful cello concertos and sonatas written for the cello-playing Spanish king, Boccherini was also a composer of quartets, quintets, symphonies, and sacred works that rival those of his contemporary Haydn.

The most comprehensive collection of music by Luigi Boccherini ever issued, 52 CDs brimming with charm, elegance, wit and catching melodies!

The most comprehensive collection of music by Luigi Boccherini ever issued, 52 CDs brimming with charm, elegance, wit and catching melodies!

When Boccherini's six quintets for flute and string quartet were published in 1776, the composer described them as "opera piccolo" (little works) because of their generally brief character. But in these splendid performances by Italian Auser Musici, the flute quintets need no disclaimers, and they sound fully equal to the composer's string quintets. Flutist Carlo Ipata takes the lead, and his playing perfectly matches Boccherini's sweet-toned but technically challenging music.

On this recording of Boccherini’s Arie da Concerto, the Belgian ensemble Capriola di Gioia defies the stubborn stereotyping of Boccherini as the gallant master of unsurpassable but insignificant melodies. Close listening to this marvellous music reveals a genius with a profound understanding of human psychology, and a rich harmonic palette to paint the smallest affective nuances. In these arias, Boccherini is rehabilitated as a true heir of Händel, a worthy contemporary to Haydn, and an early precursor of the belcanto of Bellini.