Riccardo Geminiani

The compositions recorded here are a significant example of musical taste as it spread to the other side of the English channel in the first decades of the 18th century. England welcomed the ‘Corellian’ style with such enthusiasm as to attract onto its banks a rich line-up of instrumentalists, singers, impresarios who with varying degrees of success contributed to the spread of the new Italian style based on the Sonata and the Concerto Grosso canonized in Corelli’s Op. V and VI. Francesco Geminiani arrived in London in 1714. As a direct disciple of Corelli, it was easy for him to become part of the musical life there in London, soon gaining great fame as a violinist.

Francesco Geminiani - 6 Cello Sonatas opus 5 - Jaap ter Linden
Classical, Baroque | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 306 MB | RS
Recorded: Apr. 2007, Hervormde Kerk, Rhoon, NL
Released: 2008 | Label: Brilliant 93646 | TT: 54:32
Jaap ter Linden - cello, Lars Ulrik Mortensen - harpsichord,
Judith Maria Becker - cello continuo

In this set of six sonatas for cello and continuo, Geminiani [1687-1762] follows the Corellian model […] of movements—except for the last, which is in three movements. Geminiani’s writing for the solo instrument shows an advance on Corelli in the brilliant figuration in the fast movements. Slow movements can sometimes be a bit perfunctory, lasting less than a minute, though this is not always the case. Geminiani apparently enjoyed working with the sonorities created by two cellos, and in his contrapuntal movements sometimes allows the solo and continuo cellos to cross lines.
Jaap ter Linden […] handles Geminiani’s elaborate music with ease. His smooth and rounded tone serves the music well. The continuo players provide able accompaniment. The performers are recorded in close perspective in excellent sound. (Ron Salemi, Fanfare)

Tasso’s masterpiece inherited the entire western literary legacy starting with Homer, and at the same time it comes to constitute the inspiring model of future generations of musicians, painters, and, of course, poets. In sum, working with Tasso allows us to communicate with a vast universe in time and space.

‘“WHAT?!” was the first stunned reaction of the musicians after reading through Geminiani’s Concertos Op.7. A composition that is invariably controversial, at once surprising and familiar. Then it was a new discovery with each concerto, with different textures and styles from one movement to the other. This music led us along unexpected paths from the church to the theatre, from Italy to France, from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth.’ (Pablo Valetti, violin)‘Geminiani’s music reflects my state of mind, one foot in the seventeenth century and the other in the eighteenth. The rhetoric and architecture it employs are still compatible with the Baroque. But the choice and exploration of emotions are already very new, similar to the way we feel today. This state of inner contradiction was probably not always understood by Geminiani’s contemporaries, but it is exactly what we look for and admire nowadays.’ (Petr Skalka, cello) ‘What a wonderful surprise it was to study and record Geminiani’s Op.7! In this strangely little-played set of concertos, I discovered an infinite variety of forms and colours, totally unpredictable every time, from one concerto to another and even from one movement to another.’

While program music is more strongly associated with the Romantic Era in music than any other era, It was by no means new with that era. This 1754 composition by one of the most popular composers of pieces in concerto grosso form is a set telling a popular tale of the First Crusade, based on Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata. This tale of chivalry, bravery, and romance has been made into countless operas and ballets over the years. Although it was published in 1754 as a purely instrumental work, it had been staged the year before in Paris, as a ballet-pantomime.

Piani was well enough regarded in his own time to get hired in Paris and then across the continent in Vienna, where he spent the last four decades of his life. He has been forgotten probably because the group of Sonatas, Op. 1, that are excerpted here are his sole surviving works. With the rise in popularity of Francesco Maria Veracini and the other Italians who took their music to France and England in the early 18th century, Piani is worth getting to know.

During the 18th century it became common for Italian composers, whose principal instrument was not the keyboard, to produce collections of harpsichord music. It was, effectively, a chance to demonstrate versatility and bring one’s music to a wider audience, and Geminiani was one of several musicians to embrace this: hailed as one of the great violin virtuosos of his time, he also enjoyed a fruitful career as a composer, teacher and writer of music, and in 1743 published the first of his two contributions to the keyboard repertoire – Pièces de Clavecin.