Lightweight fare is elevated by musical panache

In Copisteria del Conte: Musical Delights from the Genoese Palazzi

The Strad Issue: February 2025

Description: Lightweight fare is elevated by musical panache

Musicians: Jacopo Ristori, Viola de Hoog (cellos) Earl Christy (theorbo) Gied van Oorschot (cello continuo) Jesse Solway (double bass) Anna Pontz (psaltery) Antoinette Lohmann, Sara de Vries (violins) Gut String Quartet

Works: Music by Arnaldi, Barbella, Boccherini, Gallucci, Ferrari and Nardini [Hoffmeister]

Catalogue number: SNAKEWOOD SKUSCD202401 (2 CDs) 

In Copisteria del Conte: Musical Delights from the Genoese Palazzi

Cellist Jacopo Ristori’s project focuses on selected works copied in Genoa for onward sale by Count Federico Taccoli in the latter half of the 18th century. It serves as an interesting indicator of the varied chamber music genres that were then popular there.

Apart from two sonatas for two violins by Emanuele Barbella, neatly and imaginatively dispatched by Antoinette Lohmann and Sara de Vries, Ristori is an ever-present on this album. He teams up with bassist Jesse Solway to deliver a flexible, agile and often witty account of Boccherini’s technically challenging Sonata G579, even if the finale is a tad fast for optimum bass definition. He exchanges roles with his former Utrecht mentor Viola de Hoog in Boccherini’s Sonata G571 for two cellos and two Gare by Carlo Ferrari and demonstrates his virtuoso credentials further as principal protagonist in a sonata by Michele Gallucci, deftly supported by Earl Christy’s theorbo and Gied van Oorschot’s cello.

He also provides a dependable bass-line in two rococo-style sonatas by Gasparo Arnaldi to the colourful jangling strains of Anna Pontz’s psaltery, which takes a prominent role either as soloist or in ‘ghosting’ the contours of de Vries’s violin melodies; and he contributes significantly to the fairly equal part-writing in two attractive string quartets attributed by Taccoli to Pietro Nardini, but since thought to be by Franz Anton Hoffmeister.

All these performances are intelligently attuned to the sensibility of the period and satisfactorily captured in a resonant church acoustic. Although their musical content is relatively lightweight, their unique historical interest is indisputable.

ROBIN STOWELL