Stephanie Guibaud

Another facet of Berlioz! We may find it hard to imagine that the composer of such epics as Les Troyens started out as a guitarist… and that his first compositional experience was to transcribe songs, inherited from the Ancien Regime, for voice and guitar.The particular instrument that was given to Berlioz by Paganini survives to this day; here it brings us closer to the repertoire suitable for a musicale hosted by Berlioz: airs for voice and guitar, but also art songs (a genre which the composer pioneered), along with chamber music and pieces for solo piano. Another way of listening to Berlioz!

Although the first violin virtuosos came mainly from Cremona, Brescia or Mantua, it was Venice that swiftly emerged as the principal centre for the development of instrumental music. Moreover, it was there that most collections of this music were printed all through the seventeenth century. It is curious to note that all these virtuosos obviously enjoyed sharing their success with their colleagues: for, alongside works for one or two violins and continuo, almost all the composer-violinists gathered together on this disc conceived sonate, canzone or sinfonie for ensembles of three or four violins. In addition, these compositions often make use of bichoral or echo effects. All this was happening as part of the discovery of that nascent virtuosity so characteristic of the Baroque period, as a result of which instrumentalists devised many new effects, such as the use of double stopping, and drew attention to their artistry with virtuoso runs akin to the extravagant language of the toccata.