Johan Hemlich Roman: Assaggi a violon solo
Anaëlle Blanc-Verdin
73:27
seulétoile SE 13
Well, it turns out a ‘hattar’ is a nickname for those 18th-century Swedes in favour of an alliance with Louis XV’s France, while a ‘fancy’ one tended to put his international perspective into practice by travelling. But while the 18th-century composer Roman Helmich Roman qualified as a ‘fancy hattar’, travelling throughout Europe sampling musical styles and collecting actual music, the main influence on his own compositions was the émigré Hanoverian and adoptive Englishman G F Handel. Most famous perhaps for his orchestral suite Drottningholm Music composed for the 1744 wedding of Crown Prince Adolf Frederick of Sweden and Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, Roman composed in a wide range of genres, including choral church music. These delightful Assaggi for solo violin (literally ‘tastes’) suggest a composer of extensive musical imagination, but with a light, witty and spontaneous side. Himself an oboist and violinist, it seems likely that these fresh and vivid pieces reflect Roman’s famous ability to improvise, and may amount to written-down versions of music he may have made up virtually on the spot. Regarded by many as the founder of Swedish music, after his death in 1758, his reputation lived on in his native land, although he has remained relatively unknown elsewhere. These beautifully tasteful and eloquent accounts of his Assaggi, described in the programme notes as a ‘dialogue between the violinist and the philosopher’, by Anaëlle Blanc-Verdin, are constantly involving and entertaining – clearly this ‘fancy hattar’ had more under his hat than is at first apparent! The comprehensive French programme notes are available in English translation online.
D. James Ross