Enrico Casazza - Francesco Maria Veracini: Violin Sonatas (2008)

More than two centuries before John Lennon favorably compared the Beatles' popularity to that of Jesus, Italian violin virtuoso Francesco Maria Veracini confidently remarked that there was only one God, and only one Veracini. He was one of the first stars of the violin, younger than Corelli, roughly contemporary with Vivaldi and Tartini, who is better known only because of the satanic verses he wrote for the instrument. Veracini composed music in various genres and had a colorful life that included jumping out of a window at the top of a building in Dresden during an argument with another musician and living through a shipwreck in the English Channel. It was his sonatas for violin and continuo, especially this set from the year 1721, that served Veracini as his calling card in the courts of Germany and in London, where he was a marquee attraction. They are as flamboyant as you might expect, with broad slow movements that dissolve into showers of ornaments, Corellian fast movements with the violin taking double and triple stops to simulate contrapuntal writing, and some garishly chromatic passages (hear the final movment of the Violin Sonata No. 9 in C major, track 10, for an example). The set of 12 sonatas is divided into two parts, with the first six falling into a rough sonata da camera pattern and the others embodying Veracini's personal twist on the sonata da chiesa, often with a pair of contrasting fast movements to pump up the energy. The two halves were actually recorded separately here, four years apart (although in the same Paduan church, whose acoustics are brittle and unpleasant). The latter group seems to have a bit more energy; perhaps the dance rhythms of the chamber sonatas crimped Veracini's style, or perhaps violinist Enrico Casazza became more conversant with Veracini's idiom in the interim. He is a technically well-equipped Baroque violinist in any case, with an ability to generate the explosive style the music calls for. His continuo group, grandly named La Magnifica Comunità, is quite active and a shade too prominent, although this may be an engineering rather than a musical problem. The break between the two discs comes not between the two halves of the set, but after the seventh sonata. The problem is that the whole set barely fits on two CDs, and even done this way the first CD times out at 80:13, a hit-or-miss proposition for many CD players. At any rate, violin recitalists ought to get to know this attractive budget set. -- James Manheim