Francesco Piu Trio

He performances by the Locatelli Trio respond with spontaneity and expressive warmth to the wide-ranging effects, sometimes playful, at others sober and idiosyncratic of these fascinating pieces. Violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch articulates Veracini's melodic line with clarity and communicative charm …

In their survey of the trio sonata, London Baroque has already visited France, England and Germany and now arrives at the birthplace of the genre – Italy in the 17th Century. In this period, instrumental music was becoming important in its own right, and soon the violin was recognized as the ideal vehicle for this new style.

This release is part of an eight-disc series by the small historical-instrument ensemble London Baroque, covering the entire history of the trio sonata in four countries (Italy, Germany, France, and England) over two centuries (17th and 18th). The series is more aimed at those with a strong interest in Baroque instrumental music than at general listeners, but several of them have been attractive for anyone, and this album falls into that group. It might well have come first in a chronological series, for it includes the very first works that might be called trio sonatas, the Sonata a tre of Giovanni Cima, published in 1610, and the Sonata a tre secuondo tono, from 1621.

Francesco Cavalli's ''L'Ormindo'' is not the oldest opera in existence - in fact, Monteverdi was already dead when it was first produced in Venice in 1644. Still, this 338-year-old work stands far enough from us in the operatic distance to make any production of it an automatically controversial event. As with all works of opera's early decades, ''L'Ormindo'' is in many respects a blank page, on which modern producers are free to write, or perhaps scribble. Cavalli's score, for instance, gives few hints as to orchestration: history tells us that opera orchestras in the early 17th century were pretty much made up of whatever instruments happened to be at hand.