Michele Garruti Intimate & Classical

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 - 1832) lived and worked during a transitional period of classical music. A contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, his works remain almost unknown to this day, except for some compositions for the flute.

In 1738 the acclaimed violinist and composer Michele Mascitti (1664-1760) published in Paris his ninth collection of sonatas. The seventy-four-year-old Neapolitan musician was at the end of his long and celebrated career, but not of his creative powers. Dedicated to the Crozat family, which was to be Mascitti’s patron until the end of his life, the twelve sonatas for violin and bass op.9 are fine examples of the graceful blend of Italian and French styles that made this composer so popular in France. With the world premiere of eight sonatas from Mascitti’s op. 9, the Quartetto Vanvitelli carries on the rediscovery of this music that Hubert Le Blanc likened ‘to the warbling of the nightingale’.

At the beginning of the 18th century Italian instrumental music reached France and began to make its decisive impact. Michele Mascitti was a protagonist of this remarkable change. The young violinist moved from Naples to Paris where he spent most of his long life and managed to publish nine collections of instrumental music between 1704 and 1738. The extraordinary success and popularity of Mascitti’s works allowed him to live for many years as a free-lance musician and to be applauded and admired in the artistic circles of the French capital. His music brings us back to the fashionable and refined atmospheres of the Parisian aristocratic salons and to the galanterie so beautifully illustrated in the paintings of the time.