Cyril Amenti's Coin

Born in Normandy and largely self-taught in musical theory, Sebastien de Brossard (1655-1730) spent most of his career directing cathedral choirs in Strasbourg, Meaux, and other Alsatian cities. Brossard's 'Grands Motets' are plainly in the tradition of Lully, but have less of French elegance and more of German seriousness about them, a quality perhaps suited to Alsatian taste. Brossard has been better known as a musical theorist and as the author of the first musical dictionary in the French language, but his compositions are quite well-crafted and concert-worthy. He ranks, I think, with Delalande, Dumont, Charpentier, and a notch or two below Lully himself and Rameau. Nearly every French Baroque composer worth his salt wrote a Grand Motet on the text of Psalm 125, "In convertendo Dominus captivitatem Sion," and it's quite interesting to compare the various expressions of rejoicing in the Lord's favor.

After the violin and bassoon, Vivaldi apparently like the cello best as a solo instrument. Because while the Italian Baroque master wrote somewhere over 200 violin concertos and 39 bassoon concertos, he also wrote 28 cello concertos. Part of his special affection may come from the fact that Vivaldi himself seems to have invented the genre. Although there had been passages for solo cello in earlier composers' works, Vivaldi apparently wrote the first actual concertos featuring the cello throughout. This disc, the first in Naïve's Vivaldi's Edition's releases of all the concertos played by Christophe Coin with Il Giardino Armonico led by Giovanni Antonini, is an easy winner.

The two Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Flute and for two Cellos by Antoine Reicha show an astonishing balance between innovation and reflection. They bear witness to an outstanding virtuosity and art of composition, which revolutionise forms through spectacular, enthusiasm-provoking lines of execution and through novelties of writing that impact their deeper structures. A composer who established a link between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Vienna and Paris, Joseph Haydn and César Franck (one of the last among his many pupils), Reicha can no longer be reduced to his theoretical and didactic dimension alone: his extensive work, still too little known, continues to surprise us.

Orlando Gibbons was one of the most important composers active in England during the early 17th century. Descended from a family of musicians, he spent the last few years of his life as organist at Westminster Abbey. In 1613 he published a selection of fine keyboard music in the volume called Parthenia. In addition to his own pieces he also added some by those other emblematic figures of the time, William Byrd and John Bull. In his brief life, he was not able to compose as much music as his more famous contemporaries, but he has since through his music attained the status of a "musicians’ musician"; one whose music far transcends that of most composers of the time.

Johann Gottlieb Graun (1702/3-1771) began his musical studies at the famous Kreuzschule in Dresden. Subsequently he acquired his legendary prowess on the violin from two of the most excellent teachers of the time: the Vivaldi disciple, Johann Georg Pisendel in Dresden and Giuseppe Tartini in Padova. Very early in his career, during his service as concertmaster in Merseburg, Graun got acquainted with Johann Christian Hertel (1697-1754), an outstanding viola da gamba virtuoso; they remained friends throughout their lives, corresponding frequently. This may be the reason for Graun's apparent knowledge of the technical possibilities of the viol: his compositions for this instrument - not less than 22 large-scale works are extant - bear witness to this.

Il s'agit d'œuvres relativement précoces, composées avant son installation à Madrid alors qu'il était encore un musicien itinérant. Le jeune Boccherini a probablement joué ces concertos à Vienne et durant ses tournées de concerts à travers l'Europe jusqu'à son séjour à Paris en 1767–68. La critique parisienne fut peu favorable — un journaliste a rapporté son jeu comme « Aigre» et qu'il était peu applaudi — mais cela était probablement plus dû au fait que son public était peu habitué à entendre le violoncelle comme instrument soliste qu'à une quelconque lacune technique de sa part. Boccherini a été un pionnier dans l'émancipation du violoncelle du carcan de la basse continue.