Riccardo Geminiani

Igor Ruhadze's Brilliant Classics recording of sonatas by Locatelli (94736) won warm praise from Gramophone. 'The playing is elegantly supple, the string tone warm, and the architecture of individual movements thoughtfully worked out. All this makes for a pleasant mood and enjoyable listening. The more exuberant pieces are brilliantly and at times breathtakingly performed.'

The first six sonatas, or the sonate da chiesa as they are commonly referred to, were published in Geminiani’s arrangements in 1726 and met with immediate success. Not only were the sonorities amplified by the instrumental expansion, but Corelli’s difficult-to-play sonatas were now within reach of violinists with more modest abilities. The skill with which Geminiani embellished Corelli’s music while remaining true to Corelli is immediately evident when Corelli and Geminiani are played back-to-back. It is roughly the aural equivalent of a black and white photo now viewed in color. Geminiani’s arrangements of the second set of six sonatas, the sonate da camera, were soon completed but did not meet with the same immediate popularity.

Ruhadze plays Geminiani: the latest volume in a revelatory project breathing new life into the founding figures of the Italian violin school of the 18th century.

Harmonia Mundi's Geminiani: Concerti Grossi VII-XII (after Corelli, Op. 5) is a single disc excerpted from a larger set issued in 1999 including all of Geminiani's concerti based on models of Corelli. That set was, and is, something of an expensive proposition, but certainly a first-class choice for the music of Geminiani, for the way the Academy of Ancient Music sounds under the direction of Andrew Manze and as representative of late English Baroque music as a whole. This disc is a single-disc condensation drawn from the earlier set that comes, as an added bonus, with a thick catalog of Harmonia Mundi's active releases, and the asking price is modest.

It is now generally accepted that Vivaldi wrote ten cello sonatas – one of them now lost. Six (RV 47, 41, 43, 45, 40 and 46) of the surviving nine were published posthumously as a set, in Paris, by Charles-Nicolas Le Clerc around 1740. The other three survive in manuscript collections: RV 42 (along with RV 46) is preserved in the library at Wiesentheid Castle at Unterfranken in Germany; RV 39 and 44 (along with RV 47) are to be found in a manuscript in the Naples Conservatoire.
Geminiani’s opus 5 consists of six cello sonatas, and was first published in Paris in 1746. The twenty years either side of 1740 saw the cello rise to a very fashionable position in French musical society, largely at the expense of the bass-viol – a change of fashion which stirred such strong emotions that in 1740 Hubert Le Blanc published his fierce Defense de la basse de viole contre les entreprises du violon et les pretensions du violencel. Music such as that by Vivaldi and Geminiani which is played here by Roel Dieltiens and his colleagues must have made a powerful counter-case for the cello.

Francesco Geminiani claimed to be a pupil of Corelli but there seems to be no documentary evidence of that. There can be no doubt that he was strongly influenced by Corelli: as a token of his admiration he arranged Corelli's sonatas Op. 5 as concerti grossi. Some of these are quite well-known and so are his six sonatas Op. 5 for cello and bc. Otherwise little of his output is part of the standard repertoire of today's performers.

Andrew Manze is not only a superb violinist – check out his Biber sonatas – but also a superb music director. Since taking over the calcified old Academy of Ancient Music and bringing the group with him to Harmonia Mundi, he has produced a stunning series of recordings: a couple of Vivaldi discs, a wonderful set of Handel's Opus 6 concertos, a sublime disc of the Bach concertos. Now they have released Geminiani's Concerto Grossi after Corelli's Op. 5, and it is their best yet.