Corelli Violin

Tremendous new recordings of Baroque master Corelli's complete works, performed on period instruments. Corelli was a peer of and huge influence on Vivaldi, as well as the founder of modern violin technique; his work consists of six opus numbers comprising 72 works altogether. They are all written for string instruments only, mainly sonatas for orchestra or, in the case of Opus 6 , 12 concerti grossi that played a major role in establishing the form. Performed here by the Musica Amphion under the direction of harpsichordist/organist Pieter-Jan Belder.

Born in Rome in 1678 to a family of German extraction, Nicola Francesco Haym was employed (from 1694 to 1700) as a violone and cello player by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in the orchestra led by Arcangelo Corelli. In the final years of this period the 2nd Duke of Bedford (Wriothesley Russell, 1680-1711) visited Rome and invited the violinist Nicola Cosimi to follow his entourage back to London. Cosimi in turn invited Haym to come with him as continuo cellist. Haym therefore moved to London in 1701 and would serve as the Duke of Bedford’s ‘master of chamber music’ until the patron’s death in 1711. A significant number of Haym’s compositions were produced during this first period in his life, among them diverse instrumental music for concerts at the ducal residences.

"As the progenitor of a style whose influence more or less came to define the in- strumental music of the High Baroque, Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713) occupies a position in music history as unenviable as it is to his great credit. Just what made Corelli’s style seem strikingly novel to his contemporaries is a tricky question. To be sure, his standardization and popularization of certain formal tropes – most notably the succession of movement types in Sonate da Camera and Sonate da Chiesa – was a significant part of what his followers considered the ‘Corellian’ manner.

These are fine performances of the foundational documents of the modern instrumental sonata, but listeners should sample them and be sure they're on board with all of the assumptions being made here. Corelli's 12 Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, are divided between the sonata da camera (chamber sonata) and sonata da chiesa (church sonata) types, between short suites of dance-based movements and abstract, mostly binary structures, respectively.

Two names virtually synonymous with the violin in the twentieth century are Fritz Kreisler and Oscar Shumsky. The former was a notable performer in his own right, appearing as soloist in front of most of the world's most prominent orchestras. Today, however, Kreisler primarily lives on through his extensive compositional output, particularly that for the violin. This vast body of work can generally be categorized as being nationalistic, imitative of eighteenth century composers, or arrangements.