On my wanderings around art galleries I have
often noticed – and been intrigued by – the paintings of Evaristo
Baschenis (1617-77). Based for most of his life in his birthplace
in Bergamo, his most fascinating paintings are still life
compositions made up of musical instruments (sometimes with
a few non-musical additions). There are fine paintings of
this kind in, for example, Bergamo itself, Turin, the Accademia
in Venice, and a particularly fine Still Life with Musical
Instruments has found its way to the Musées Royaux des
Beaux-Arts in Brussels. In this last, various musical instruments
lie on a large table, seemingly abandoned casually after music
making. But the casual air is deceptive; the more one looks
at the painting the more intricate the geometries of the arrangement
reveal themselves to be. A score hangs out from a drawer at
the left - presumably the music recently played: two apples,
past their best, reinforce the idea that the music has happened
and is no more. The visual geometries of the instruments seem
to offer a kind of after echo, transferred to the eyes rather
than the ears, of the no longer audible music. Bass viol,
mandolin, cittern, two guitars, a lute and a flute are amongst
the instruments visible. The paintings of Baschenis have always
seemed to me to evoke that tantalising sense of having just
missed some fine music, of having, frustratingly, not been
party to some intimate chamber music, which one is now left
to try to imagine. What a good name, then, for a chamber group
– Ensemble Baschenis! Read the (excellent) booklet notes and
one discovers that their author (and the theorbist of the
group), Giorgio Ferraris, has “under the auspices of the Accademia
Carrara of Bergamo … made a study of the musicological
and organological aspects of the works” of the painter. Though
it dates from some time after his death, one suspects that
Evaristo Baschenis would have loved the music here recorded
in his name, as it were.
Little is know of Giovanni (or Johann) Hoffman,
though he seems to have been a well regarded performer on
the mandolin. These compositions date, Ferraris suggests,
rather oddly, from the 1770s or 1780s, which doesn’t harmonise
with a birth date of 1770. The music itself is delightful.
For some strange synaesthetic reason it makes me think of
sitting and eating good Italian ice cream after a long spell
in the sun. While that particular association is, no doubt,
absurdly subjective, the music is certainly refreshing in
its tang and colour, its melodic fluency and its rhythmic
sharpness. It gets a loving performance full of unexaggerated
joie-de-vivre. All this is enhanced by a crystal clear recorded
sound.
Giuliani’s work has a slightly lower centre
of gravity, with some of Hoffman’s sprightliness replaced
by a greater reflectiveness. But he shares Hoffman’s essential
grace and unassuming ease of creativity. He also shares Hoffman’s
fascination with the subtle shifts of tone colour possible
with this combination of instruments, which draws, in part,
on the connections between mandolin and violin in the musical
thought and practice of the Eighteenth Century. As Ferrarri’s
notes point out, performers often doubled on the two instruments;
he calls them ‘accomplices and rivals’. Mandolins from Brescia
and Naples were tuned identically to the violin.
In the work of both composers – played with
such sensitive and intelligent understanding of the idiom
by the Ensemble Baschenis – the advancing into and retreating
from prominence of each solo instrument in turn, along with
the beautifully judged continuo work, produces patterns of
structure and texture which the painter who gives his name
to the group would surely have admired and, as it were, recognised
as cognate with his own art.
While this may not be music of great profundity,
and isn’t remotely grand in scale, it is exquisitely made
and played - without the slightest hint of mere preciousness.
It rinses the senses into freshness, engages the mind and
makes the foot tap. This time – in contrast to the paintings
of Baschenis – we haven’t missed the music! There’s
much unpretentious pleasure to be had here.
Glyn Pursglove
Ensemble Baschenis:
Ruggero Fededegni (violin), Marco Luca Capucci (mandolin), Alessandra
Milesi (cello), Giorgio Ferraris (theorbo) 
