Sebastian Bach composed many works for violin (besides the pieces for organ and harpsichord, the two instruments he mainly played). He had learned to play the violin as a child and knew its characteristics perfectly well. Unfortunately, the manuscripts of many of his compositions were lost after his death: the three sonatas for violin and basso continuo BWV 1021, 1023 and 1024 are today a small remnant of what is thought to be a much larger production. In addition to these sonatas, the CD is completed by harpsichord transcriptions of some movements from the solo sonatas for violin, which may have been adapted by Bach himself, and by a trio sonata originally written for violin, flute and basso continuo in a version for violin and harpsichord obbligato.
Lorenzo Ghielmi performs the Leipzich ChoralesBWV 651–668, which are a set of chorale preludes for organ prepared by Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig in his final decade (1740–1750), from earlier works composed in Weimar, where he was court organist. The works form an encyclopaedic collection of large-scale chorale preludes, in a variety of styles harking back to the previous century, that Bach...
the Six Books of the Dolphin of Music for Vihuela (Valladolid, 1538) is the second collection published in the Iberian Peninsula dedicated in its entirety to music for vihuela, or vihuela and voice
We may wonder whether the violin was a northern Italian invention, for the instrument was also to be heard in the great cities of southern Italy at an early stage, from the beginning of the 17th century onwards. Certain southern Italian composers had clearly understood that the instrument was unequalled in its ability to express emotion allied to virtuosity, including Montalbano in Palermo,...
In 1959, two composers wrote nonets: Nino Rota’s melodic Nonetto, on which he would continue to work for almost 20 years, and Bohuslav Martinů’s farewell chamber music piece, a nonet, which he composed as a last piece to satisfy his longing for his homeland. Eisler did not compose his nonet in his native country either, but arrived in Mexico in 1941 as a refugee from the Nazis. There he wrote...
Il violoncello di Corelli leads us to the origins of the solo cello literature – although one should actually use the term violone. In fact, the cello, as we know it today in its standard form, had many different sizes before its current proportions became generally established. Some instruments were larger, and the smaller ones were referred to by the diminutive form of the term violone –...
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sei Solo for unaccompanied violin figure amongst the baroque works on which the performance traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries weigh most heavily. Rediscovered halfway through the 19th century after having been forgotten for more than a century, these works quickly entered the repertoire of works performed by violinists during the Romantic period: from that moment...
