Italian Baroque music

Extract

These days, most early music CDs are openly ‘themed’ in some way over and above the intention to showcase the work of an artist or ensemble. This approach is nearly always beneficial when carefully realized but is not risk free, for a mistaken attribution can play havoc with the best-laid plans.

Simplest of all, when the total duration matches the capacity of a CD, is to record a single collection by a single composer, as occurs in two of the discs in the present batch. Thus Marco Uccellini: Sonate over canzoni (Stradivarius str 37023, issued 2015, 79′) and Francesco Geminiani: Concerti grossi, op. 7 (Alpha 396, issued 2018, 64′)—performed respectively by the duo Arparla (Davide Monti, violin, and Maria Christina Cleary, double harp) plus extra colleagues as needed and Café Zimmermann directed by Pablo Valetti—offer complete sets. That by Geminiani has been recorded a few times before, but Uccellini’s collection, his op.5, now appears complete for the first time.