Luca Fanfoni - Locatelli: L'Arte del Violino (2002)

It was June 1733 when L’Arte del Violino, 12 concertos for solo violin, strings and basso continuo with 24 caprices for solo violin ad libitum, emerged from the printing press of the Amsterdam editor Michel Charles Le Cène. The importance of L’Arte del Violino rests in the extraordinary emancipation it created in violin technique. Locatelli’s writing, in fact, puts the violinist, who is pushed to the limits, to a difficult test. L’Arte del Violino marked a definite leap ahead from tradition; only at the beginning of the 1800s would Nicolò Paganini receive Locatelli’s legacy and create its ideal continuum with his 24 Caprices.

For the present recording the new critical edition of the renowned Locatelli scholar Albert Dunning’s was used. This rigorously philological performance of these works restores the composer’s ultimate spirit, which in the past was sometimes misinterpreted or deliberately betrayed.