Daniele Caluri

Born in 1804, Louise Farrenc became a professional-standard pianist while still a teenager, and later music teacher to the household of the Duke d’Orléans and from 1842 professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire. Her substantial legacy of composition was largely forgotten after her death in 1875 and is only now being revived. She wrote mainly in the field of orchestral and chamber music: ‘I would defy anyone,’ says the pianist Linda Di Carlo in a personal introduction to this new recording of Farrenc’s music for violin and piano, ‘to cast aspersions on the chamber music in particular on the grounds of her gender.’

This recording, from friends and collaborators Federico Bracalente and Daniele di Bonaventura, stems from an idea they had almost 10 years ago: to merge the sounds of their respective instruments, the cello and the bandoneon, into a single sound.

The cantata Della Passione di Gesù Cristo, J-C 124 (On Jesus Christ's Passion), was first performed in San Fedele on 9 March 1759, the first Friday of Lent. This title, which was published in the catalogue of Sammartini's works (Harvard University Press, 1976), does not correspond to the text found in Father Keller's manuscript. The text belongs instead to the cantata Gerusalemme sconoscente, ingrata (Jerusalem, ungrateful and disowning), which bears the number J-C 122. In the catalogue, this number belongs to the text of the cantata La perfidia giudaica (The Jewish Wickedness), which is considered lost and is catalogued as number C-49. According to the current state of research the 1760 cantata Della Passione di Gesù Cristo, Signor nostro seems to be lost.