The years surrounding
the publication of these Sonate accademiche in 1744 were
busy and difficult ones for Veracini. In January of 1744 his
opera Rosalinda – his fourth opera – opened in London.
The same year saw a London performance of his L’errore di
Salomone - of which nothing appears to survive. As well
as working in the opera house, he performed with some frequency
in Hickford’s Room in Brewer Street, the famous concert room
which was at the height of its reputation in this decade. In
1745 Veracini, now some fifty-five years old and described by
Burney as “in years”, decided to return to Italy. But the ship
on which he was travelling was wrecked. Mary Gray White, in
Music and Letters, Vol. 53, 1972, quotes from an anonymous
manuscript annotation to be found in a copy of the Op. 2 sonatas,
now in The Hague:-
“This Veracini was
the best Violin player of his time; and so vain of his superiority,
as frequently to say there was but one God and one Veracini.
He resided a while in England, and in his passage home was shipwrecked
and narrowly escaped with his life. He had with him his two
famous Stainer violins reckoned the best in the world which
he named St. Peter and St. Paul but their saintship could not
prevent there going to the bottom. He was particularly famous
for the uncommon strength and clearness of his tone”.
Before this serious
misadventure, the Sonate accademiche – the title perhaps
meant to imply a claim that they are particularly suitable for
performance in academies of music, where an audience of connoisseurs
might be expected? – were published “per l’Autore” in Florence
and London, with an engraved portrait from a painting by Ferdinand
Richter.
The
music of these sonatas is an odd – but fascinating - mixture
of the innovative and idiosyncratic on the one hand and, on
the other, of elements which would probably have struck contemporaries
as slightly old-fashioned, with their clear reminiscences of
Corelli. There’s an abundance of ideas and plenty of varied
rhythms. The stylistic ‘mix’ may, in part, be the result of
Veracini’s having brought together, for publication, music written
at very different periods. The menuet in no.4 carries the date
of 1711, but much of the music was surely written long after
that. Veracini was widely travelled and his encounters with
a wide range of European music are represented in the eclecticism
of these sonatas. So, for example, no.9 closes with a ‘Scozzese’,
in fact a decorated treatment of the Scottish tune ‘Tweed side’.
Its inclusion surely relates to Rosalinda, in which Scottish
melodies were incorporated, not entirely successfully, according
to Burney, who dryly observes that “few of the North Britons,
or admirers of this national and natural Music, frequent the
opera, or mean to give half a guinea to hear a Scots tune, which
perhaps their cook-maid Peggy can sing better than any foreigner”.
Elsewhere in these op.2 sonatas we find both an ‘aria Schiavona’
(Slavonic air) and a ‘polonese’, reminders that Veracini had
spent a number of years in Germany and, indeed, that his wife
(who died in 1735) was Polish.
Drawing
on work from various periods of his career, and on a variety
of musical traditions, to which is added some of Veracini’s
characteristic idiosyncrasy, the mixture produces some exhilarating
music. There are dance movements; there are fugues (and inverted
fugues); there are contrapuntal capriccio movements, with unexpected
twists and turns; there are lyrical slow movements (in some
of which the tempi adopted here may perhaps be a little on the
quick side for some tastes); there is some richly chromatic
writing; there are some unexpected dissonances; above all, there
is a sense of great vitality and humanity.
When
this music is played with the energy, enthusiasm and judgement
that the Locatelli Trio (now renamed Convivium) bring to it,
there is a great deal to enjoy and to learn from. Wallfisch
is a violinist of great musicianship, steeped in knowledge of
period performance practice and able to put that knowledge to
unpedantic use in playing full of subtle dynamic shadings and
well-judged use of decoration and rubato. Tunnicliffe and Nichiolson
make an admirable continuo team, and the whole benefits from
a crystal clear recorded sound. This is Baroque chamber music
of a high order.
Glyn Pursglove
