NEL GIARDINO DI PARTENOPE sonate napoletane per violoncello TRACKLIST P. 2 ENGLISH P. 4 a Wanda e Gianni FRANÇAIS P. 9 ITALIANO P. 15 A 385 CONCERTI NAPOLETANI PER VIOLONCELLO TRACKLIST P. 22 ENGLISH P. 24 FRANÇAIS P. 30 ITALIANO P. 36 NEL GIARDINO DI PARTENOPE 2 Menu SONATE NAPOLETANE PER VIOLONCELLO Rocco Greco (ca. 1650 – dopo il 1718) Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36) Sinfonia terza à due viole in Sol maggiore 1 Sinfonia à violongello solo in Fa maggiore 4 1 Grave 1’17 19 Comodo 1’14 2 Allegro 2’19 20 Allegro 1’47 3 Corrente 1’22 21 Adagio 2’10 22 Presto 1’45 Giulio de Ruvo (fl. 1703-1716) Sonata à violoncello solo in Sol minore 2 Salvatore Lanzetti (ca.1710 – ca.1780) 4 [Allemanda] 2’43 Pièces pour le violoncelle 5 5 [Giga] 1’16 23 Grave 4’05 6 [Minuetto] 1’21 24 Allegro 3’50 25 Affettuoso 2’14 7 Tarantella – Romanella – Tarantella 2 4’25 Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) Francesco Alborea detto Francischiello (1691-1739) Sonata à violoncello solo 6 3 Sonata a violoncello e basso in Sol maggiore 26 Adagio 1’16 8 Adagio 2’23 27 Allegro 1’29 9 Allegro 2’46 28 Adagio 1’19 10 Adagio 0’30 29 Allegro non presto 1’52 11 Menuetto 2’12 Pasquale Pericoli (seconda metà del XVIII secolo) Francesco Alborea detto Francischiello Sonata Quarta in Fa minore 7 Sonata a violoncello e basso in Re maggiore 3 30 Allegretto 3’11 12 Amoroso 2’30 31 Siciliana 3’02 13 Allegro 2’16 32 Allegro 1’56 14 Menuet 1’39 Salvatore Lanzetti Francesco Supriani (1678-1753) Sonata op. V n. 3 in Re maggiore 8 Toccate a violoncello solo con la diminuzione 4 33 Adagio cantabile 3’19 15 Toccata Sesta in Re maggiore 2’14 34 Allegro 2’41 16 Diminuzione 2’19 35 Grazioso 3’51 17 Toccata Decima in Re minore 2’10 18 Diminuzione 2’02 Total time 79’03 3 Menu GAETANO NASILLO violoncello MICHELE BARCHI clavicembalo SARA BENNICI violoncello www.gaetanonasillo.it STRUMENTI Violoncelli: Antonio Ungarini, Fabriano ca. 1750 (Gaetano Nasillo); Barak Norman, London ca. 1710 (Sara Bennici). Archi: Fausto Cangelosi, Firenze (copie da modelli italiani del XVIII secolo). Clavicembalo: Michele Barchi, Ghedi (Brescia) 1985, su modelli italiani del XVIII secolo. FONTI 1 Sonate a due viole (1699), Ms. Montecassino, Biblioteca Statale del Monumento Nazionale. 2 Ms Milano, Biblioteca del Conservatorio «Giuseppe Verdi», Fondo Noseda. 3 Ms. Praha, Národní Muzeum – České Muzeum Hudby. 4 Ms. Napoli, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di Musica S. Pietro a Majella. 5 Da manoscritti conservati a Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale. 6 Ms. London, British Library. 7 Sonate sei a violoncello e basso o sia cembalo, Bologna 1769. 8 Sei sonate à violoncello, e basso, Paris ca. 1760. ℗2015 / ©2015 Outhere Music France. Recorded at the Spazio San Giovanni, Asti, 17-19 November 2014. Artistic direction, recording, editing and mastering: Alban Moraud. Produced by Outhere Music France. 4 Menu NEL GIARDINO DI PARTENOPE The cello in 18th-Century Naples. La Viola da Gamba, & da braccio, tengo per fermo che Parma, and Gabrielli in Modena—has led music historians’ ne siano stati autori gli Italiani, & forse quelli del Regno thinking in that direction. Although there is no doubt di Napoli. (“I am convinced that the viola da gamba that around the Cappella Musicale of San Petronio in and the viola da braccio were created by the Italians, Bologna and at the court of Francesco II d’Este in Modena, perhaps those from the Kingdom of Naples”). This is there was a great variety of bass violins of different sizes, what Vincenzo Galilei—father of the astronomer—wrote numbers of strings, and even ways of playing (holding the in his Dialogo della Musica Antica et della Moderna about instrument vertically while standing or sitting, or holding the origins of the violin and viola da gamba (Florence it horizontally while standing) this does not mean that 1581, p.147). Although we traditionally think of the early other nations in the Italian peninsula did not have their development of these instruments as a result of the own traditions. post-1492 Jewish diaspora into the Alpine region, there Indeed, it is the Kingdom of Naples that produced is an argument to be made that they were also intro- the first truly virtuoso cellists; these, beginning in the duced through another route: that of the direct Spanish early 18th century and thanks to their emigration or influence in the Kingdom of Naples (a vice-kingdom of occasional employment in Spain, Austria, France, and the Spanish crown) and in the late 15th-century papal England, established an approach to this smaller type of court of the Borgias in Rome. bass violins that ended up being much more influential In considering the history of the bass instrument of the for future generations than did the Emilian tradition of violin family, we can actually develop a similar hypothesis. Gabrielli or Bononcini. Whereas in Northern Italy and in Here too, musicologists have traditionally thought of the Rome, the violone and violoncello with four or five strings, violoncello as an instrument that developed in Bologna played in a variety of positions and with underhand bow and the surrounding area (Emilia). Given that during grip (as the gamba players use it) kept coexisting well most of the 17th century the larger violone was the more into the 18th century, Neapolitan players of the four-string common bass of the violins in Italy, the first appearance violoncello with their overhand bow grip and advanced of the term violoncello in a publication by the Bolognese technical virtuosity made a decisive impression both organist Giulio Cesare Arresti in 1665 gave historians the on visiting foreign musicians in Naples and on French impression that the violoncello was indeed a specifically and English audiences and critics when they performed Emilian novelty. Also the presence in Emilia of some of there. When Quantz visited Naples in 1725, he described the earliest solo cellists and their repertoire specifically Francesco Paolo Alborea (1691-1739), nicknamed il intended for the violoncello—Jacchini in Bologna, Galli in Francischiello (“little Francis”), as an “incomparable 5 English violoncellist.” The English music historiographer Charles cello tutor, along with detailed illustrations of the (for Burney, discussing violinist František Benda, during his him obligatory) overhand bow grip. Even in France, the visit in Berlin, wrote in a footnote that: “normal” bow grip had been underhand on the basse de violon, except in Lully’s Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roy “Francischello (!), was the most exquisite performer on the base-viol [i.e. cello] of his time. Geminiani related of him, that in in Versailles, so Corrette’s assertion of this exclusive accompanying Niccolini, at Rome, in a cantata composed by use of overhand bow hold was quite revolutionary. It Alessandro Scarlatti, for the violoncello, the author, who was at is highly unlikely that any of these innovations were the harpsichord, would not believe that a mortal could play so divinely; but said, that it was an angel who had assumed the not influenced by the presence and influence of not figure of Francischello; so far did his performance surpass all just Neapolitan cellists, but also by the popularity of that Scarlatti had conceived in composing the cantata, or Neapolitan music in France (and in London) in general. imagined possible for man to express.” (p. 136) We should not forget that in the 1740s, France was in Finally, there is a story (probably apocryphal) that the the middle of the Querelle des Bouffons, which opposed French gambist Martin Berteau (1708-1771) switched to traditionally French musical aesthetic principles to the the violoncello after hearing the divine playing of Alborea, Italian (i.e., Neapolitan) ideas, that eventually prevailed. thus becoming the first French cello virtuoso (and teacher This Neapolitan-inspired approach to virtuoso cello of Duport, Janson, and others). playing also flourished in London, but particularly so in On the other hand, it is probably no coincidence that Paris, and the general success of the Neapolitan “galant in exactly the period during which another important style” also influenced both the curriculum of the Paris Neapolitan cello virtuoso, Salvatore Lanzetti (c.1710- Conservatoire a few decades later, and the way the vio- c.1780) played at the Concert Spirituel in Paris in May loncello was taught there through its first teacher Jean- 1736, French composer-cellists such as Jean-Baptiste Louis Duport (1749-1819). In this sense, it was not really Barrière (1707-1747) of Bordeaux began to publish vir- the Emilian tradition but the Neapolitan cello school that tuoso cello sonatas in a style and at a technical level was the true foundation of the “classical” cello school as comparable to Lanzetti’s. In fact, the last three com- it would develop throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. positions in Lanzetti’s first set of twelve cello sonatas — (published as his Opus I in Amst erdam in 1736), and The present recording provides an overview of cham- some of the sonatas of Opus V are not playable without ber compositions for violoncello and basso continuo (or extensive use of the so-called thumb technique, which cello solo) from some the earliest extant Neapolitan allows for more stability and flexibility of the left hand pieces for the instrument in 1699 until the 1769 Sonatas in the highest positions. This technique of the use of by Pasquale Pericoli, a cellist from Lecce. In these sev- the thumb as a “capo tasto” in high positions was first enty years of Neapolitan music the cello emerged and described five years later by Michel Corrette in his 1741 developed into a solo instrument for which complex 6 technical virtuosity had nothing to envy the violin for.