Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695-1764)
6 introduttioni teatrali
6 introduzioni teatrali (1735) Violin Concerto in A major
Europa Galante / Fabio Biondi (violin)
rec. Mondovi (Italy), 2023
Naïve V8210 [50]

The nature of Locatelli’s career makes it rather difficult to be sure of the dates of individual compositions and also, therefore, to talk about his development as a composer. He must have studied music in Bergamo since, while still very young he is known to have been appointed third violinist at the city’s basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. However, he was evidently too ambitious to settle for life in his native city; in his teenage years he went to Rome (in 1711), apparently hoping to further his musical education by studying with Corelli. However, Corelli’s health was now failing (he was to die in 1713). There is some evidence that Locatelli studied with Giuseppe Valentini (1681-1753).

From 1717 to 1723 Locatelli was active at the Roman palace of that great patron of the arts, Cardinal Ottoboni. Locatelli’s first publication was his Dodici Concerti grossi a quattro e cinque (Rome, 1721). Perhaps it was inevitable that the model for these early works by the young Locatelli was provided by Corelli’s Concerti grossi, Opera Sesta published posthumously in 1714. Yet, as the distinguished musicologist Fulvia Morabito writes, in her excellent and informative booklet essay accompanying this disc, “There was no slavish imitation of the model […] due to Locatelli’s sensitivity to sonority. Locatelli reformulated the relationships between the two instrumental groups typical of the concerto grosso, the solo concertino and the orchestral ripieno, augmenting the former with one or two violas and merging the two strictly opposing forces in multiple, fluid solutions”. The introduttioni are interesting, but in this performance there are some brief lapses from the high standard one expects of Europa Galante. (For example, in the opening movement of introduttione No. 4 the ensemble work is a little lacking in clarity and intonation is not all it might be; the same applies to the opening of No.5). However, these are minor blemishes.

In 1723 Locatelli left Rome and set out on what turned out to be a long journey northwards, taking in Mantua, Venice, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and Kassel, before arriving in Amsterdam in 1729. Along the way he was appointed (in 1725) as virtuoso da camera at the court of Mantua, but within two years he had resumed his journey northward. He must have found Amsterdam especially congenial (and profitable) since he stayed there until his death in 1764. His reputation as a virtuoso violinist had reached Amsterdam before he himself did. He found numerous patrons in the city: “he held a series of strictly private concerts in the presence of selected amateurs, in order to guard the secrets of his prodigious technique. For the same reason, he carried out a teaching activity aimed exclusively at the offspring of the city’s nobility” (Fulvia Morabito). The city contained a number of wealthy patrons willing to support Locatelli.

It is hard to guess whether Locatelli’s journey was originally undertaken with Amsterdam in mind, or whether it was one more place on his itinerary, but once he had arrived there he thought the city to be just right for him. Certainly he soon recognised that Amsterdam was an important and thriving centre of music publishing, with important publishers and he was soon both working with one of the major publishers (La Cène) as an adviser and what we might now call a consultant and was getting his own works published in the city, in such collections as L’Arte del Violino (1732), XII Sonate à Tre (1732), Sei Sonate à Tre, o due violino , o due Flauti Traversieri, è Basso (1736) and XII Sonate à Violino solo è basso (1737). It is not clear how far these collections gather works written during his years of travel or how much of this music was written after his arrival in Amsterdam. It seems likely, however, that the six introduttioni teatrali were composed in Amsterdam. Fulvia Morabito suggests that they may well have been written for the Amsterdam Musical Theatre, which “was located just behind the musician’s house”. The introduttioni are by turns vivacious (in the faster outer movements) and lyrical (in the central slower movements); a mix of qualities which might reasonably be described as ‘operatic’. However, their similarities one to another (and their brevity) make it more rewarding to listen to them one at a time, rather than listening to all six in one sitting.  Texturally, these introduttioni teatrali are indebted to the concerto grosso, in their alternation of passages for two distinct instrumental groups which correspond to the ripieno and concertino of the Corellian model, while structurally they owe more to the tripartite form of the contemporary operatic sinfonia.

The Violin Concerto in A major is, unsurprisingly, a more substantial affair. It survives, in two manuscripts, fortunately (since it does not appear in any of the collections Locatelli published in Amsterdam). One of these is now preserved in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden and carries an attribution to Locatelli. It was formerly in the private collection of Johann Georg Pisandell (1687-1755), violinist and concertmaster at the court chapel in Dresden. Morabito tells us that the manuscript of this Violin Concerto was written “in the period roughly 1725 to 1755”. The concerto may have been composed during Locatelli’s long journey from Rome though Germany to Amsterdam. The other manuscript of the concerto is in Stockholm’s Statens Musikbibliotek. The score contains some notes by Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758), composer and conductor of the court orchestra of Stockholm. Perhaps, as Morabito suggests, it might have been prepared for two concert s given in the city’s Town Hall in November 1747, which are known to have included music by Locatelli.

The Violin Concerto in A major is a work full of variety, sometimes calling for brilliant virtuosity, at other times softly lyrical. Although it is in a fairly standard three-movement form – the movements being marked ‘Vivace’, ‘Largo’ and ‘Allegro – Andante- Allegro’ In the closing movement, the opening Allegro passage alternates with two passages marked Andante. This final movement, the work’s longest, also contains a technically demanding Capriccio and Cadenza, of which Fabio Biondi gives a sizzling account, full of flair and well-disciplined energy. His intonation is more or less impeccable, and it is hard to imagine any other violinist creating a superior performance of this work.

Recorded in the Accademia Montis Regalis, in the small Piedmontese town of Mondovi (a venue used by Hyperion around 2008/2009), the acoustic is very natural and the sound well-balanced.

The Violin Concerto is the main attraction here, and admirers of Locatelli or Fabio Biondi should not hesitate to acquire this disc.

Glyn Pursglove

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