Giovanni Bottesini was not only among the most famous double bass players of his time, but was also a conductor of some distinction and a...

Giovanni Bottesini was not only among the most famous double bass players of his time, but was also a conductor of some distinction and a composer. He conducted the first performance of Verdi's opera Aida in Cairo in 1871 and won success with some, at least, of his own ten operas. Known to some as the Paganini of the double bass, he significantly extended the technical possibilities of the instrument.

"The Duetto for two basses is probably the earliest and most etude-like work on this disc, from a set of three dedicated to Bottesini’s teacher, Luigi Rossi. The Concerto No. 2, sometimes referred to as in A minor, or in B minor, for complicated reasons arising from old-fashioned tuning conventions, is a fully mature work, from the well proportioned, somewhat laconic first movement, through the simply singing second, to the third, driven by a rhythmic figure typical of the polonaise (and the Cuban bolero).

Other selections emphasize the essential vocality of Bottesini’s inspiration, most explicitly in the Bellini Fantasia, but stylistically so in the pairings of bass, always singing, now with clarinet, now with soprano. The anonymous texts are routine bourgeois expressions of popular Romantic sentiment; but in the case of Tutto che il mondo the music is very well known - Chopin’s Etude Op. 25, No. 7. The Bach transcription is perfectly straightforward. Can there be any instrument without a transcription of this piece? The Adagio melancolico projects that characteristic elegiac mood, demanding a virtuosity of feeling at least as much as of just technique, that Bottesini perfected for many of his stand-alone solo pieces."

Jeffrey L. Stokes