First Modern Recording
Beatrice Scaldini, violin
Simone Laghi, viola
Cristina Vidoni, cello
Wolfsburg Castle, Germany 29/03/2019, during a wonderful pre-concert rehearsal
Recorded with Zoom Q2N
Who was Jacque Vanderbouzzen?
Apparently, he never existed, and most probably this nickname was used by Felice Giardini (1716-1796) to publish a set of two trios, one in Stile Tedesco (two violins and bass), and one in Stile Italiano (violin, viola and cello).
He published this set in 1792, when he was about to leave London for good to establish himself in Russia. Giardini’s style at the time was old fashioned, he was struggling in keeping up with the brilliance of the younger performers as the Italian instrumental genre in London was being overshadowed by the arrival of the new music from the Austro-German school, and especially by Haydn, called by the same Giardini “the German dog”.Read More
On the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Neapolitan violinist Emanuele Barbella (1718-1777) I decided to organize the premiere recording of his Sei Duetti a Due Viole. The recording, made by Fabio Framba, will be accompanied by the first publication of the score of this set of duets by DaVinci editions.
Barbella studied with his father, Francesco, and with Pasquale Bini, one of Tartini’s favorite pupils at the Scuola delle Nazioni in Padua. The Sei Duetti belong to the Italian instrumental repertoire from the mid-18th century. Emanuele Barbella was the teacher of Ignazio Raimondi (1735-1813), another Neapolitan violinist who had been very active in the British musical environment up to the beginning of the 19th century. The importance of Tartini’s school for the development of the European violin tradition deserves to be underlined, also in the wake of the upcoming 250th anniversary of Tartini’s death (1770-2020).
Andreas Moser, in his Geschichte des Violinspiels, described these Sei Duetti as one of the most significant of Barbell’as works. These pieces are featured by the typical elegance of the Italian chamber music of the 18th century and were probably destined to the private entertainment of amatori e dilettanti. They are characterized by great fantasy and by a variety of ideas and certainly reach beyond the traditional didactic scope of the duet genre.