Francesco Barsanti (1690-1775)
6 Sonatas Op.2
Ensemble ConSerto Musico
rec. 2023, Studio Rosso Zanotto Strumenti Silvelle di Trebaseleghe, Padua, Italy
Brilliant Classics 96243 [66]
Like so much other musical activity in the British Isles in the first half of the 18th century, the life and work of Francesco Barsanti has rather been overshadowed by Handel, although the composer seems consciously to have kept himself out of the limelight. Born in Lucca in 1690, he settled permanently in these islands in the 1720s, taking up residence in London – his earlier arrival in 1714 with his friend Geminiani seems to have been just a visit, as he returned to Italy later in that decade. He migrated northwards in the 1730s – via York to Edinburgh – but returned to London in 1750, and died in the capital in 1775.
The publication of the six solo sonatas that constitute his Opus 2 in 1728 pre-date Handel’s first publication of similar works, his Opus 1, by a couple of years and are accomplished if not ground-breaking compositions in a well-written Italianate style. The first edition billed them as for the flute, but a subsequent edition by John Walsh listed them as for flute, oboe, or violin, no doubt to make them more marketable to a wider range of potential performers. The music is certainly interchangeable among those instruments, and in accordance with performance practice at the time when music was frequently transferred from one instrument to another, this recording distributes them among those three.
The sonatas receive graceful, unassuming interpretations, not importing any more gravitas into the music than it means to convey, even in the more contrapuntal movements. Francesco Padovani on the flute brings an artful simplicity to Nos. 1 and 4, adding a degree more expression in the sighing figures of No. 1’s Largo and No.4’s Grave, where half of the latter movement is accompanied affectingly by the cello alone until the harpsichord steals in later, as a little triplet figure is passed between the two instruments as though a tender, melancholy dialogue between lovers. Andrea Mion draws a distinct contrast in the two sonatas given to the oboe. He adopts a mellow sonority for No. 3 in keeping with its domestic nature as chamber music, though No. 5 is more reedy and plangent. On the violin, Federico Guglielmo also brings discreet charm in the remaining two sonatas, playing with a clean, silvery line that avoids vibrato. No. 6 is particularly characterful, with its Gigue-like first Allegro, and then a coy second Allegro as the sonata’s finale.
Each sonata is prefaced by one of the Scottish folksongs which Barsanti arranged with a bass part in a collection of 1742 (decades before Haydn and Beethoven arranged other folksongs with piano trio accompaniment). Although stylistically different from the sonatas, they set the tonal background for each, played lyrically by the cello, though missing a greater degree of Celtic yearning. Andrea Mion rounds off the disc with a livelier traversal of Lord Aboyne’s Welcome on Cumbernauld House on the oboe.
Curtis Rogers
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Contents
O Dear Mother, What Shall I Do?
Sonata No.1 in D major
Gilderoy
Sonata No.2 in B minor
Corn Riggs are Bonny
Sonata No.3 in G major
Lord Aboyne’s Welcome on Cumbernauld House
Sonata No.4 in E minor
Johnnie Faa
Sonata No.5 in C major
Logan Water
Sonata No.6 in A minor
Lord Aboyne’s Welcome on Cumbernauld House
Performers
Francesco Padovani (flute), Andrea Mion (oboe), Federico Guglielmo (violin), Francesco Galligioni (cello), Roberto Loreggian (harpsichord)
