Music by CIMA, UCCELINI, FONTANA, MONTEVERDI, ROGNANO, CASTELLO, GESUALDO, BASSANO, FRESCOBALDI, MEALLI, F. M. VERACINI
Violinist Enrico Onofri, well-known concertmaster of Il Giardino Armonico, explains in his notes to the selection of works he and Imaginarium present that the early 17th century constituted a magical “borderland” between the vocal world and the instrumental one to come. In it, Giovanni Paolo Cima’s sometimes solemn and vocally conceived Sonatas (1610)
rub shoulders with Giovanni Marco Uccelini’s more virtuosic type from 1645 (Uccelini would explore the sixth position in one of his works), with its fluttering rapid notes and its bolder declamation. Fontana’s sonatas from 1641, with long-breathed ornamented melodies punctuated by rustling passages, fall somewhere in between.
Drama spices the arching songfulness of these pieces, as it does in Cima’s Sonata for Cornet or Violin—the second of his sonatas in this collection—the last section’s scalar lines of which sweep upward—or as in Claudio Monteverdi’s piece from his 1638 collection of Madrigali guerrieri, et amorosi from 1636, with its exuberantly rushing parts for two violins (Onofri is joined in this work by Alessandro Tampieri) and the pathos of its chromatic descending lines.
Richardo Rognano’s passegiato from his Passaggi, libro secondo precedes Monteverdi’s work by almost half a century, but in its swirling figuration it, too, though modal, sounds modern, especially by the standards of, say, Corelli’s solo sonatas as they’ve been so often played (without embellishments). The title of Dario Castello’s Sonata from 1640, with its passages in echo and the dramatic sighs near its end, explicitly identifies it as being written “in stil moderno.” It’s clearly instrumental in conception. Carlo Gesualdo’s work from Madrigali, libro quinto , 1613, brings Onofri together again with Tampieri in a chromatic fantasy that clearly offers a reworking of a searingly dramatic vocal piece. Giovanni Bassano’s Ricercata seconda , played by solo violin, the earliest piece (1585) on the program, sounds spare and regimented in this lavishly imaginative company, especially in such close proximity to Monterverdi’s brief Armato il cor d’adamantina fede . Frescobaldi’s “aria” features a solo part by Onofri on violino piccolo.
Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli, whose sonatas Andrew Manze has recorded twice—Channel Classics 5894, which I had the privilege of reviewing in 17:6, and Harmonia Mundi 907241, which I also had the privilege of reviewing, in 23:2—may come near the end of this procession of Italian violinists, but the Sonata “La cesta,” from his op. 3, while it may demonstrate more obvious structural design (there’s a passacaglia at its heart), seemed almost crack-brained in its originality when Manze first championed it. Onofri plays it with rapturous ecstasy. The program ends with a work based on the ascending hexachord, an antique canonic fantasy by Francesco Maria Veracini from the next century (1744) that reflects on instrumental music’s vocal roots.
Onofri, who has demonstrated so rich an imagination in his performances with Il Giardino Armonico, endows these works, in collaboration with his ensemble, with an equally vibrant exploratory sense, not only of the richly varied forms, but also of the similarly kaleidoscopic instrumental colors and brilliant virtuosity. The colors may be generated by period instruments, but they flash so brightly that the message almost obliterates the medium. I’ve reviewed several collections of music from this period during the last decade and a half (for example, the brief 45-odd-minute survey, “Il violino in San Marco,” by the Trio Arcangelo Corelli, MDG 3476, which I urgently recommended in 17:1), and each time I’ve marveled at the music’s inventiveness—though never more so than in this recording. So again, urgently recommended.
FANFARE: Robert Maxham
