Francesco Geminiani, Concerti Grossi Composti Sull’Op

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762), Concerti grossi & La Follia Concerto No. 1 in D major 1.-4. Adagio Grave – Allegro – Largo – Allegro 9’24 Concerto No. 10 in F major 5.-9. Preludio – Allemanda – Sarabanda – Gavotta – Giga 9’55 Concerto No. 3 in C major 10.-13. Adagio – Allegro – Adagio – Allegro 9’33 Concerto No. 8 in E minor 14.-17. Preludio – Allemanda – Sarabanda – Giga 10’30 Concerto No. 5 in G minor 18.-21. Adagio – Vivace – Adagio – Allegro 8’40 Concerto No. 11 in E major 22.-26. Preludio – Allegro – Adagio – Vivace – Gavotta 7’42 Concerto No. 12 in D minor 27. La Follia 11’33 Ensemble 415 Chiara Banchini, direction ENGLISH – FRANÇAIS Francesco Geminiani, Concerti grossi composti sull’op. V di A. Corelli “Then came over [from Italy to England] Corelli’s first consort that cleared the ground of all other sort of musick whatsoever. By degrees the rest of his consorts, and at last the conciertos came, all which are to musitians like the bread of life” (Roger North, 1725). My 1989 recording of the first part of Arcangelo Corelli’s sonatas op. 5, known as thesonate da chiesa, was a true rediscovery for me. I now saw these works in a new and very different light from the standardised interpretation taught in conservatories, thanks to the ornaments, the style of articulation and the basso continuo which blossomed under the expert fingers of Jesper Chris- tensen. In making this effort to call into question my first twenty years on the modern violin, I was able to examine every facet of a composer who had gone unnoticed, indeed was unknown in my course of study. After this, playing these sonatas in concert regularly, I made a point of working on the so-called sonate da camera that make up the second part of op. 5. Their apparent simplicity does not pre- vent each movement from being a perfect little tableau: several styles of composition, a variety of dances (sarabande, gigue, courante, gavotte) alternating with contrapuntal movements, never a moment too long, a subtle texture in which the bass takes on a concertante role and abandons its continuo function. The da camera half of op. 5 concludes with that incredible Follia which has come down over the centuries, a bravura piece intended to show off the technical prowess of every virtuoso. And here I was discovering it anew, amazed to find I was being asked to perform a ‘folly’ restored to its initial simplicity and purity. Here, Corelli goes right to the heart of things: not a note too many, not a note too few. In 1991, I was persuaded to record Corelli’s op. 6 concertos with a large ensemble of forty musicians. Once again I was amazed at what I discovered. In Rome, Corelli directed an orchestra that varied in size between 40 and 150 musicians. The impact of that sonority must have been overwhelming. No comparison at all with the small chamber groups his contemporaries were used to. And here we are again, Jesper Christensen and I, confronted with a Corelli who was truly grandiose. We recorded his Concerti grossi op. 6 with an orchestra or forty. This was something new, and it may have surprised some critics, unused to such large Baroque ensembles. But it was absolutely exhila- rating for the musicians. All of them still remember the experience today. It was only twelve years later, when the recording was re-released in 2003, that this work we had accomplished so long ago was rewarded with a Diapason d’or: “An invaluable reissue in this Corelli anniversary year, after which we may not find a successor for a long time to come”, wrote Gaetan Naulleau inDiapason (December 2003). On the occasion of the Folles Journées de Nantes 2003, we went a step further. I was back with Corelli again for an even more ambitious project. We played those concertos with eighty instru- mentalists: the magic worked again, to the delight of musicians and audience alike. After twenty-five years of playing Baroque music, Corelli is still my constant companion. And I was thrilled to discover a few years ago that Francesco Geminiani had made an orchestral version of the sonatas op. 5. Right from the first read-through with Ensemble 415, our enthusiasm had us convinced that this transcription was the work of a great violinist and composer. Perhaps our enjoyment was as great as that of the musicians who first played this version in London. We had just recorded the concertos of Giuseppe Valentini with the option of having all the members of the ensemble playing as soloists. So we decided to repeat the adventure here. I believe the result justifies that choice. For me, playing these sonatas again with orchestra was a constant process of discovery. Geminiani embellishes them while still respecting his master’s text. He has a double purpose: to pay tribute to Corelli, and to place his works within the reach of amateur violinists (which is not the case with the original sonatas op. 5). Geminiani leaves the soloist free- dom to embellish the text. We have opted for ornaments that come closer to the school of Gemi- niani himself than to that of Corelli. Among his many written works on music, Geminiani – an unpredictable violinist: “furibondo” as Tartini called him – left us a magnificent Art of Playing on the Violin. In this work he gives very precise details about the ornamentation used by his school: we have followed him. In some of the sonatas, we use the organ with a true 8-foot Diapason tone so as to add still further to the richness of orchestral sound. I hope that the pleasure and astonishment we experienced throughout the sessions comes through in this recording, which offers each musicians a chance to take turn as concertino soloist and ripieno player. Chiara Banchini Translation: Charles Johnston Francesco Geminiani, Concerti grossi Francesco Geminiani (Lucca 1687 – Dublin 1762) composed three sets of concerti grossi (op. 2, 3 and 7), two collections of violin sonatas (op. 1 and 4), one of cello sonatas (op. 5) and The Inchanted Forest. But this fairly limited output of original works was published in a great many versions: just for op. 1, besides the editio princeps for violin and continuo (1716), there exists a transcription for trio sonata formation (c. 1742), an edition with added ornamentation (1739), a version for harp- sichord (Pièces de Clavecin, 1743, 1762) and one for flute. This admittedly considerable body of arrangements and transcriptions of his own music and that of others was due above all, according to some of his contemporaries, to his scanty supply of musical invention. Thus for example Fran- cesco Maria Veracini wrote in his Il Trionfo della Pratica Musicale (c. 1760), in an evident allu- sion to the composer from Lucca (this treatise is in large part devoted to a fugue by Geminiani, described as mostruosa): “The Reheaters [Rifriggitori] were so called because, every time they were required to produce new Compositions, they always reheated the same ones, already reheated on previous occasions, beginning with their studies under the authority of their Master (when they were schoolboys), very often removing from these what had been good at one time and inserting in their place newly added parts from the Music of others, which had already pleased the Public, reheating it with the self-same method with which they had already reheated their own never- ending leftovers.” And again, concerning transcriptions of the works of others, with probable reference to the concerto grosso transcriptions of Corelli’s op. 5: “The Paraphrasers, in paraphrasing the Composi- tions of others, seemed to compose, and the short-sighted might believe that these were works by the Author whose name was to be read at the top of the score. Such paraphrases were, most often, a poor pastiche of short pieces lacking in continuity, good taste and expression, neither forming a logical sequence nor fulfilling their promise. Thechief causes of such musical misdeeds were various types of Rheumatism that always affect the Com- positions of those who compose unskilfully, or rather steal all that they write.” In reality, the issue was not scarcity of musical invention (a criticism that could just as well have been levelled at Corelli and other composers of the time), nor was Geminiani’s purpose purely economic. His “reheatings” were motivated by various, often overlapping concerns: the desire to improve a work to court, to bring it into line with modern tastes, to illustrate his own theoreti- cal principles (Geminiani published no fewer than six treatises on music), to make his music or that of others accessible to a broader public, to keep his own prestige alive, and of course to make money. The case of his concerto grosso transcriptions of Corelli’s sonatas for violin and continuo op. 5 is of particular interest in this respect. The first instalment of the concertos (comprising the da chiesa works) was actually published by Geminiani on the initiative of an English society of Freemasons of which he was a founding member. The aim of the operation was essentially a didactic one, namely to set English music back on the right path, that of the ‘good old’ music of the Roman school, of which Arcangelo Corelli had been the foremost representative, with Gemi- niani – who had settled in England in 1716 – his principal heir and apostle. In addition to being an excellent violinist, a composer ranked in his own time with Handel and Corelli, an esteemed teacher and theorist (his violin treatise is the most important before Leopold Mozart’s) and a controversial dealer in paintings, Geminiani was also a Mason, and in this guise he contributed to the birth of the earliest Masonic lodges in Italy (it is a little-known fact that he himself was the very first Italian Mason).

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