Sonates italiennes pour mandoline

Description

Behind this all-purpose title lies a recital of delightful Baroque and pre-Classical sonatas for mandolin and continuo. An instrument mainly widespread in Italy, where during the 17th and 18th centuries it took on a myriad of variants in shape, number of strings, tunings, etc., before the Neapolitan mandolin, which appeared around 1750, asserted a supremacy that has lasted to the present day, the mandolin inspired many little-known but nonetheless talented composers, as this very fine recording shows. The High Baroque period, which represents the peak of this creative flowering, was highly sensitive to the ambivalence of the instrument’s thin but expressive timbre, capable of conveying both a certain existential anguish and a wholly sunlit joie de vivre (minor-key sonatas by Piccone and Arrigoni). The works by Sammartini and Gervasio, imbued with the galant spirit, are marked by the supple and natural melodic charm of the following period. In the interest of timbral coherence, the brilliant performers chose to realize the continuo on theorbo, another instrument of the lute family. The three short sonatas for archlute, taken from the Della Casa manuscript (Bologna 1759), bear witness to the still very much alive taste, especially among amateurs, for the lute and its derivatives in the second half of the century. (Jean-Michel Babin-Goasdoué)