Giovanni Sollima, I Turchini - Neapolitan Cello Concertos (2012)

Giovanni Sollima has been successfully pursuing a twin career as cellist and as a composer and it is in both capacities that the Palermo-born musician appears now on a new recording from Glossa. Sollima teams up with I Turchini of Antonio Florio in a captivating demonstration of virtuoso concerto treasures from Leonardo Leo, Giuseppe de Majo and Nicola Fiorenza. The quality of their committed music-making is underscored by Dinko Fabris who, in an accompanying essay, provides yet another lucid exposition of a musical climate unknown to many.
Giovanni Sollima’s empathy with the spirit of the 18th century concerto allows him not only to provide – and to play masterfully – elegantly appropriate cadenzas for the works of his forebears but to compose a modern work comfortable and at ease with its Neapolitan past (and entitled “Fecit Neap. 17..”, mirroring the frequentlyfound ascription found on manuscripts in the 18th century).
With a solo cellist in Giovanni Sollima, who is equally at home in the musical worlds of Patti Smith, Claudio Abbado and Philip Glass, and a director in Antonio Florio, who is equipped with his own masterful overview of Neapolitan music from the Baroque onwards, this new disc was recorded in a venue, the old Santa Anna dei Lombardi monastery complex in the heart of Naples, which serves to point up how powerful a forging ground for cello music Naples was from the end of the 17th century and into the 18th, as well as in our own time.