Mozart: 6 Violin Sonatas, K. 10-15 (Versions for Flute and P
Naxos
CD
$19.99Sep 26, 2006
In April 1764 the Mozart family arrived in London on a concert tour arranged by Mozart's father Leopold which had already taken them to cities in Germany and to Paris. They were to stay until summer the following year. Received at the English court.
In this release, Orli Shaham comes to the end of her monumental survey of Mozart's complete Piano Sonatas. With this achievement, the pianist puts a double bar line on an exhilarating journey through music she has known most of her life. Shaham's affinity for Mozart is evident in each sonata, to which she applies tonal beauty, technical fluency, textural lucidity, and interpretive flair. Revered as a "thrillingly expressive" interpreter of Mozart's works, Orli Shaham brings "technical virtuosity and deftness" to performances that "connect directly with an audience".
Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708-1763) was born in Schweidnitz, Silesia (today Poland). His special inclination towards music led him to undertake a brief period of study in Breslau (today Wroclaw) with the court musicians who were under the employment of the Archbishop of Breslau. In 1733 Janitsch moved to Berlin where the then Crown Prince, Frederick offered him a position as a double bass player. With the permission of the Crown Prince, he founded the circle "Freitagsakademien" (Friday academies), in which music was performed by professional and amateur musicians alike. From 1740, when Frederick ascended to the Prussian throne, Janitsch's position as double bass player was transferred to the newly founded Berlin Court Orchestra. The Friday academies continued in Berlin in his home in the form of weekly concerts open to the public. Janitsch's compositional style is typical of the galant and the empfindsamer Stil of the first half of the 18th century, combining attractive melodic writing with disciplined compositional craft. The Church Sonatas, written for 2 violins or violin and oboe plus basso continuo, mingle echoes of Corelli’s Baroque style with the galant or pre-Classical manner of Janitsch’s age. The Berlin Friday Academy is a Berlin-based ensemble made up of young players from around the world – a group of passionate, historically-inspired musicians striving to bring about beauty through the performance, recording, and scholarly discussion of eighteenth-century music.
The 'living Baroque' idiom of Federico Maria Sardelli has been extensively documented on Brilliant Classics, with albums of concertos (BC94749), cantatas (BC95068) and harpsichord music (BC95488) that have advanced the reputation of this modern composer and scholar and won international attention, with 5-star reviews in Diapason and elsewhere. Now Sardelli turns his imagination to the genre of the trio sonata that exemplified chamber music-making in the Baroque era. The collection of six presented here divides into two sub-genres, of the church sonatas (Nos. 2, 4, 5) and chamber sonata (Nos. 1, 3, 6) which would have been heard in a domestic, albeit aristocratically appointed, context. Sardelli makes passing and subtle allusions to poignant melancholy (in the Larghetto of the First Sonata), to an infernal rhythmic impulse (the second movement of the Fifth), to more profound meditations on mortality (such as the Adagio without bass of the Third), and even to declarations of love (the opening of the Sixth) - though the subject of Sardelli's affection is surely Vivaldi himself. According to the composer, this is not Baroque pastiche. Rather, as a noted scholar of Vivaldi, he seeks to recreate such music in his own image with music of the present which 'regains it's own original language and adheres to it's own original criteria, expressing vibrant new ideas that are in keeping with it's identity.' It would be quite possible to think that the trio sonatas here had been written with a goose quill in 17th-century Venice, but they are by no means dry exercises in imitation. Rather they are full of an authentically Venetian vibrancy and color from any age, sparkling with a variety of knowing brilliance that belongs to the temperamental character of the city. The performances here are given by musicians who have long worked with Sardelli in his Modo Antiquo ensemble which has made highly praised recordings of 'real' Vivaldi as well as Sardelli.
