Rossini Sonatas

The works gathered here hail from two different sets of string quartets: the four so-called Solo Quartets by Franz Anton Hoffmeister and Gioachino Rossini’s six String Sonatas (or Sonate a quattro). Both sets differ from the ‘normal’ configuration in that they allow a double bass to take part, albeit in different ways. Rossini, who composed his sonatas at the age of 12 (!), left out the viola and gave the double bass a more or less conventional bass role albeit with occasional virtuosic outbursts.

Known by and large for his seemingly inexhaustible supply of lighthearted operas, Gioachino Rossini did not restrict himself to that genre alone. As a boy of only 12 years, he was already accepting commissions to write small chamber works, including the present set of six string sonatas commissioned by the wealthy Agostino Triossi. Triossi was an accomplished amateur double bassist, a fact to which Rossini paid homage by scoring the six sonatas for a quartet made up of two violins, cello, and bass.

Rossini’s ‘Six String Sonatas’, geschreven voor twee violen, cello en contrabas, dateren uit 1804 en werden in drie dagen gecomponeerd, Rossini was slechts twaalf jaar oud. Ze laten een verbazingwekkende kwaliteit horen en zijn af en toe haast zo goed als de werken van Haydn en Mozart.

Move over Mendelssohn: new recordings of six summery string quartets composed by the prodigiously gifted teenage Rossini.

Rossini himself described these works as «six dreadful sonatas, composed by me on holiday at the home (near Ravenna) of my Maecenas friend Agostino Triossi when I was at a most infantile age, not even having taken a lesson in accompaniment.» Written at the age of twelve, as if only for the pleasure of it, in only three days with an ease reminiscent of Mozart, these compositions exude an entrancing, naive freshness.