Musical delights from the Genoese palazzi
Jacopo Ristori cello and artistic director
136:00 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
Snakewood Editions SCD202401
The arrival of this set took me back to the good old days of the “early music revival” when almost every consignment sent for review contained at least one recording that explored completely new repertoire. These days, with groups driven to devise original “takes” on well-known music that set them apart from the crowd and far less financial support from recording companies, it is quite unusual to come upon a project such as this that champions the obscurity of its material: music from late-18th-century Genoa.
Pretty much the only composer most people will have heard of on the playlist is Boccherini, two of whose sonatas (G. 571 & 579) open the second disc. Elsewhere, there are violin duets by Barbella (not the one recorder players know!), “contests” for two cellos by Ferrari, two sonatas for psaltery, violin and continuo by Arnaldi, and two string quartets attributed to Pietro Nardini in the sources (copies in the hand of the “conte” of the discs’ title) but most likely composed by Franz Anton Hoffmeister.
Cellist Jacopo Ristori is joined by fellow cellists Viola de Hoog and Gied von Oorschot, violinists Antoinette Lobmann, Giorgos Samoilis and Sara de Vries (who also plays viola in the quartets), Jesse Solway on contrabbasso, Anna Pontz on psaltery and Earl Christy on lute/theorbo. For me, the most musically satisfying pieces were the string quartets; the prominence of the violist in the second was surprising but indicative of advances in that genre at the time. The two psaltery sonatas are interesting for what they are, but the two treble instruments spent too long doubling one another for the material to make any lasting impression. The contests between two cellists are – I imagine – more entertaining in real life than on a recording, with each player trying to outdo the other. Barbella’s violinistic skills are evident from his duets, but they are not in the same league as Leclair’s or even Pleyel’s better contributions to the repertoire. If this all sounds like I’m damning the recording with faint praise, that is not the impression I would like to give; Count Federico Taccoli’s contribution to the dissemination (and, in some cases, survival) of music heard in Genoa in the second half of the 18th century is invaluable. These performances reveal some of it in the best possible light. Ristori and his colleagues are to be complimented and thanked for their pioneering endeavour!
Brian Clark