Dmitry Sinkovsky / Il Pomo D'Oro VIRTUOSISSIMO

                                                                   VIRTUOSISSIMO

La Serenissima / Adrian Chandler THE GODFATHER

La Serenissima explore the network of friendships and collaborations that helped bring together German and Italian styles during the Baroque, with concertos by Telemann, Pisendel, Brescianello and others.

The musical world of eighteenth-century Europe was a small one. Despite the problems presented by contemporary standards of transport, it was quite normal for composers in one part of Europe to be entirely au fait with what was happening elsewhere. This is borne out by the closeness of three German composers: Telemann, godfather to C.P.E. Bach; Pisendel; and J.S. Bach, who admired both his compatriots and composed some astoundingly difficult music for the violinist Pisendel. This programme celebrates their music as well as the music of those who contributed to their musical heritage. Included alongside the German triumvirate are works by Vivaldi who physically helped with the composition of Pisendel’s A minor concerto movement, Fasch who was a great friend of Pisendel and Telemann, and Brescianello, an Italian who helped the dissemination of Italian instrumental music throughout the German-speaking lands and whose concertos were played in Dresden by Pisendel.

Vaughan Jones JOHANN JOSEPH VILSMAŸR Six Partitas for Solo Violin

Anyone who listened to Vaughan Jones’s 2014 release, ‘The Hidden Violin’ (7/14), will know that repertoire rarities don’t always produce a winner of an album. To say that Jones’s latest two-disc set is a great deal more rewarding is something of an understatement. Yes, it’s obscure repertoire once more; but this is music that demands our full attention, presented in such a manner as to ensure that it gets it.

The main event is the first-ever recording of the complete, original set of Six Partitas by Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr, who worked as an increasingly prominent violinist at the Salzburg court between 1689 and his death in 1722. His Partitas, which pre-date those of Bach by at least five years, are challenging polyphonic works, full of double- and triple-stops, arpeggiated chords and implied conversations between musical lines. French and Italian influences are audible, as is that of Austrian folk music, but the take-home point is simply that they’re intensely beautiful works that constantly tickle the ear with fresh moods, styles and effects as they dance along. Add the immaculate technical precision and immense musicality of Jones’s playing (on a gut-strung modern instrument tuned at A=440kHz and played with a replica snakewood Baroque bow), set it all within the subtly ample acoustic of the church of St Mary Magdalene in Willen, Buckinghamshire, and you have something of a recording triumph which the programme’s other two works only build upon.

First, Pisendel’s Sonata in A minor. Then, to finish, a story: Biber’s The Guardian Angel Sonata, No 16 from the Mystery Sonatas, played with a purity, profundity and sense of dramatic architecture that truly stops you in your tracks. Really, bravo. (Charlotte Gardner / Gramophone)

Rachel Podger GUARDIAN ANGEL Works by BIBER, BACH, TARTINI, PISENDEL

The music on this recording demonstrates how composers in Germany, Italy, Austria and England responded to the challenges of writing for violin senza basso. Music for violin senza basso had a distinguished history before Bach and was widely cultivated by his contemporaries.

Violinistic virtuosity was extraordinarily experimental in the late seventeenth century, with novelties in the tuning of the strings (scordaura), bowing techniques, chordal playing and contrapuntal textures (with the development of sophisticated double-, triple- and quadruple-stopping techniques) and playing in high positions. This disc of solo violin music is a real mixture of some of Rachel's favourite pieces.

Rachel Podger is one of the most creative talents to emerge in the field of period performance. Over the last two decades she has established herself as a leading interpreter of the music of the Baroque and Classical periods. After beginnings with The Palladian Ensemble and Florilegium, she was leader of The English Concert from 1997 to 2002 and in 2004 began a guest directorship with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with whom she appeared in a televised BBC Prom in 2007. As a guest director and soloist she has collaborated with numerous orchestras including Arte dei Suonatori (Poland), Musica Angelica and Santa Fe Pro Musica (USA), The Academy of Ancient Music, The European Union Baroque Orchestra, Holland Baroque Society and the Handel and Haydn Society (USA).

Rachel directs her own ensemble, Brecon Baroque and is Artistic Director of her own festival: the Brecon Baroque Festival. Rachel is an honorary member of both the Royal Academy of Music (where she holds the Michaela Comberti Chair for Baroque Violin) and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (where she holds the Jane Hodge Foundation International Chair in Baroque Violin) and teaches at institutions throughout the world. (Gramophone Magazine: Editor's Choice - November 2013)