A chameleonic violinist inspires in the Italian Baroque

The Strad Recommends: Rachel Barton Pine: Corelli

THE STRAD RECOMMENDS

The Strad Issue: February 2025

Description: A chameleonic violinist inspires in the Italian Baroque

Musicians: Rachel Barton Pine (violin, viola d’amore) John Mark Rozendaal (cello, viola da gamba), David Schrader (positive organ, harpsichord), Brandon Acker (lute, theorbo, guitar)

Works: Corelli: Violin Sonatas op.5

Catalogue number: CEDILLE CDR 90000 232 (2 CDs)

Rachel Barton Pine’s ‘eclectic and unconventional career’ (The Strad, November 2024) continues with these outstanding period-instrument accounts. Instead of honouring Corelli’s prescribed instrumentation of violin and ‘violone’ or keyboard, she exploits the opportunities offered by the recording process to add an array of accompanying instruments, constantly changing the instrumental colours movement by movement and varying the textures within them.

Despite this ever-changing canvas, she and her ensemble never lose sight of Corelli’s musical dialogue, whether in fugal movements such as the Allegros of no.1, exuberant bravura moto perpetuos such as no.6’s third movement, stylised dances (in nos.7–11) or in lyrical Adagios (e.g. no.5). Another departure from Corelli’s specification is Pine’s use in no.12 of an original-condition Nicolò Gagliano viola d’amore (1774), a sublime match for her sonorous unaltered Nicolò Gagliano violin (1770) used elsewhere.

Inspired by Christoph Riedo’s research into artwork and verbal descriptions of Corelli’s time, Pine holds her instrument at the chest rather than on the collarbone, fully mastering the challenging left-hand and bowing techniques that this demands. She claims a resultant greater intimacy with the music, one that is intensified by her (and occasionally her colleagues’) imaginative, spontaneous ornamentation of movements slow and fast, deliberately eschewing the ‘graces’ purported to be Corelli’s in Roger’s 1710 edition. Other winning features include the telling improvised guitar opening of no.11’s Adagio and the solo theorbo introduction to no.12’s well-turned ‘Folia’ variations.

This Cedille package has everything: benchmark repertoire, flawless, expressively nuanced performances, exemplary recordings and an informative booklet (although the latter’s instrumentarium list surely misleads regarding no.2’s Allegro).

ROBIN STOWELL