Recorder Sonatas by Veracini and Barsanti – Bergen Barokk

The Corelli tradition

In the year 1700, Arcangelo Corelli´s famous Opus 5 for violin and basso continuo first appeared, in Rome. The work consisted of six full-scale church sonatas and five lesser chamber sonatas, plus a masterly set of variations over the popular tune “La Follia”. Each of the sonatas bore the master´s stamp, models of balance and restrained good taste. The sonatas of Veracini and Barsanti, which the ensemble Bergen Barokk has recorded on this album, are well understood in light of this foregoing work.

In Francesco Maria Veracini´s sonatas one surmises a certain impatience with the Corelli aesthetic, with an exciting intrinsic to the trim spinning out of strictly restrained motivic material across the arching lines of a rising and falling dynamic. As with Veracini, Francesco Barsanti often sketches out a quite simple melodic line in the slow movements, inviting extensive ornamentation by the performer. In comparison with many other contemporary sonata collections, produced for the swell of musical dilettantes in the ranks of a greatly increasing middle class by musicians of doubtful taste and schooling, Barsanti´s sonatas are of notably high quality.

Bergen Barokk consists, on this album, of Frode Thorsen (recorder), Hans Knut Sveen (harpsichord & organ), Markku Luolajan-Mikkola (baroque cello) and Eero Palviainen (lute).