Il Trattimento Armonico, directed by Nicola Reniero
42:27
Brilliant Classics 97496
The nine Balletto-Corrente pairs that make up this set were published posthumously by the composer’s nephew. They are scored for five-part strings, for which the present performers chose two violins, an alto viola, a tenor viola and a cello, with the director playing harpsichord continuo.
I have known the set for decades (I published the sixth pair in 1990 with what was King’s Music!) but have never heard them in actual performance. Legrenzi’s music has always struck me as a fusion of Italian and French ideas – his harmonic palette is much richer than many of his countrymen’s, and his voice-leading much more masterful. As I listened to the disc again and again (it’s short enough for that not to be an issue!), I was reminded again and again particularly of another 17th-century composer: Henry Purcell. Many of these dances could easily fit into one of the latter’s theatre works. One musical idea that caught my ear more than once was something I had only previously heard in one of the sonatas Legrenzi devoted to the Holy Roman Emperor (presumably in the hope of getting a job in Vienna!), where he juxtaposed triplets and duplets; it is a surprisingly striking device.
As for the recording itself, I have to say that the performances (for the most part) deserve better; a richer acoustic might have taken the sharpness off the violin tone, and better microphone positioning might have given the continuo part less prominence. There is a real elegance to some of the playing, but there are also brief passages where the ensemble doesn’t speak with a single voice. This is especially noticeable in the two five-part sonatas (La Marinona and La Fugazza, both of which I edited years ago) that “fill out” the disc; there is plenty of room for some of the many trio and quartet sonatas that are rarely recorded.
Brian Clark