Davide Locatelli Hyper Silent

Giuseppe Torelli, whose native land was Veneto, is deservedly included among the composers who contributed to the renown and success of the Bolognese School, which was undoubtedly one of the keystones of Italian Baroque music, together with the Venetian, Roman and Neapolitan Schools. Torelli’s production that has been handed down to us includes almost 200 works, most of them chamber-music instrumental compositions and orchestral pieces with solo performers. Eight of these works are in print, practically all of them published in Bologna from 1686 onwards. The 12 concerti grossi con una Pastorale per il Santissimo Natale, posthumous work no. 8 from 1709, published by Felice Torelli, brother of the composer and celebrated painter, are undoubtedly his most inspired work, and not only for their extremely high musical quality.

Half a century ago, Giuseppe Tartini might have been the only composer of the Italian Baroque most classical music listeners could name. That was thanks to the so-called Devil's Trill, which appears as the final track on disc one of this two-disc set. Here one can experience the "trillo del Diavolo" in its proper place, as the final movement of a three-movement Sonata in G minor for violin and continuo, and within a larger slice of his output: this pairing of two previously released discs also includes a published set of violin sonatas from around the time of the Devil's Trill (around the early 1730s), and several later sonatas with a goodly degree of novelty on disc two. In a way, the rest of the music makes the Devil's Trill seem less remarkable.

Famed throughout musical Europe from the 1720s onwards for his extreme prowess on the violin, Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764) bequeathed to posterity an admirable if relatively small body of work, the publication of which he himself largely oversaw following his move to Amsterdam in 1729. Here Fabio Biondi draws on it to paint a unique portrait. Rather than immersing himself in L’arte del violino, op.3 - the best-known opus of a composer to which they already devoted an initial album in 1995 (Opus 111, OPS30-104) - Biondi and his friends in Europa Galante opt for a more intriguing Locatelli: the six Introduttioni teatrali (Theatrical Introductions) which constitute the first part of the Opus 4.

The Baroque Ensemble “Carlo Antonio Marino”, directed by Natale Arnoldi, already protagonist of important Classical and late Baroque productions, within this album is faced with the concertos from the seventh opus by Pietro Antonio Locatelli, well known composer and violinist from Bergamo. When it appeared, this collection was not particularly successful; probably the mixture of different musical styles in the Concertos was not appreciated by the public, which by then was moving towards the new sensitivity of the galant style. Op.7, in any case, is an excellent and occasionally brilliant work of Locatelli’s: a musician who, in spite of the fact that in 1741 he had already attained fame and glory, did not hesitate to run the risk of attempting to renew the waning Italian Concerto, by experimenting with approaches that might accommodate the new trends, without however denying his own origins.

The autograph reference “Per la Sig.ra Geltruda” on the manuscript of Vivaldi’s motet “Clarae stellae, scintillate” has long aroused the curiosity of researchers. By years of research around the Vivaldi expert Michael Talbot is now revealed who this “Signora Geltruda” is: Geltruda della Violetta was a girl from the Venetian orphanage La Piet , where Vivaldi worked for over a decade. Geltruda probably had an exceptionally beautiful voice that quickly attracted the interest of important personalities.