Luogo e data di registrazione		Bennebroek (Holland) - Febbraio 1967
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9518-A | 1 LP - durata 41' 06" | (p) 1968 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Teldec Classics "Frans Brüggen Edition" Vol. 2 | LC 6019 | 4509-93669-2 | 1 CD - durata 72' 43"  | (c) 1995 | ADD
	Cover		Judith Leyster: "Flötenspieler". Nationalmuseum Stockholm.
	Note		-

Corelli’s variations on La Folia, from the beginning of the 18th century the composer’s most famous work, were originally written for violin and figured bass and constitute, in this version, the last of the twelve “Sonate a violino e violone o cimbalo”, which first appeared in Rome with the superscription of 1st January 1700, and by 1720 saw no fewer than twenty reprintings, above all in Amsterdam and London. The present version for recorder (in which the only simplifications are of technical peculiarities like the chords or double-stopping of the violin version) had already been published in 1702 by Walsh in London. The imaginative title “La Folia” (Walsh wrote “La Follia”) denotes nothing more than that the work is constructed on the bass pattern known as a ‘folia’, which first emerged in Spanish and Italian music of the early 16th century as a bass (i. e. as a harmonic framework) for vocal and instrumental movements, and thence, partly also combined with a more or less fixed or varied upper melodic Part, set out on its victorious path through Europe. In the instrumental music of Corelli’s time, particularly in the sets of variations, this pattern attained its richest flowering - not only Corelli himself, but also Pasquini, d’Anglebert, Cabanilles, Marais and Alessandro Scarlatti wrote sets of variations on La Folia, in so doing giving free rein to their imagination, particularly from the point of view of technique. Corelli’s “sonata” is planned as a sequence of ‘a theme and 21 variations. The theme preserves, along with the traditional 3/4 measure, the traditional descant melody and its sarabande character; thereafter movement and melodic figuration are increased from variation to variation, and rhythm, tempo and compositional technique constantly changed, while the harmonic movement and its symmetric organisation (4+4, 4+4 bars, both halves repeated) remain firmly fixed. The frequent recurrence of long phrases building up from grave crotchet movement in sarabande rhythm to virtuosic semiquaver figurations in the separate movements gives the work its inner coherence and its accompanying dynamics; the abundance of ingenious melodic and constructional ideas and the extraordinary technical demands lend it that range of colour and that air of fantasy which already fascinated its contemporaries and made the work so uniquely famous. An entirely different picture is offered in Barsanti’s flute sonata, which comes from “Sonatas or Solos for a Flute with a Thorough Bass”, first published in 1724. Barsanti belongs to that large number of Italian instrumental composers who, in view of the dearth of purely instrumental music at home, sought their fortune abroad. Born about 1690 in Lucca, he went with Geminiani to England, where he worked partly in London, partly in Scotland, until he died, half forgotten, in London at some unknown point of time between 1750 and 1776. His attractive and technically highly demanding sonata reveals him as a considerable flautist and as a composer who (as in his concerti grossi) stands very close to Geminiani, his companion in travel and fortune. The introductory Adagio transforms the pathetic-expressive style of the Italian high-baroque into a sensitive, elegant figuration rich in sighs, delicate melodic suspensions and chromaticisms. The first Allegro, with its energetic, characteristic principal subject, suggests a concerto movement by Vivaldi; it is followed by a considerable A minor Largo, which with its wide-ranging melody and bass lines and its mixture of pathos and tender rapture particularly and strikingly recalls Geminiani. The last movement begins as a typical dance-like 3/8 finale but strikes a more serious note in its broad melodic arches and colourful harmony. The sonata by Veracini comes from an early work by the composer, the “Sonate a Violino, o Flaute solo, e Basso”, which the young virtuoso, already famous, presented in 1716 in Venice to Prince Friedrich August of Saxony on his Italian journey. Veracini’s strongly individual style is already plainly shown here: above all the mixture of baroque and pre-classical elements is outstanding and attractive. The introductory 12/8 Largo is a still entirely baroque Siciliano, which affirms the traditional pastoral nature of this type of movement with little echoes and a sentimentally sweet, uninterruptedly emphatic flowing cantilena. The following Allegro, in contrast, is already almost an early classical movement of the divertimento type - an artless but always charming and tasteful succession of precise, melodically pregnant motifs in regular four-bar groups. The E minor Largo begins with a pathetic, broad baroque melody but soon changes to a succession of almost “galant” small motifs with the typical dotted rhythm and the “speaking” melodic flourishes of the new era. The finale is an entirely “modern” 3/8 final dance, formally a fully developed sonata movement with new ideas in the middle section: a most gay, witty and virtuoso piece of considerable proportions. The sonata of the Venetian Dominican friar Bigaglia, of whose life we know almost nothing, is one of the very few surviving works for fourth flute - apart from two suites by Dieupart the only one known up till now. The manuscript reveals a charming, if not exactly a profound, talent between Vivaldi and Galuppi; the form and construction of the sonata indicate a truly “progressive” spirit which, with a pleasure in experimentation, took up and worked on what was musically in the air of Venice. Thus the traditional form of the sonata da chiesa is completely abandoned, and elements of the suite and the concerto intervene. The first movement is an Adagio, more graceful than serious, cantabile and with typically “modern” dotted rhythms over a very simple bass; the ensuing Allegro, straightforwardly song-like in its phrasing, approaches sonata form and is characterised by an animated, simple dance melody. The Tempo di Minuetto is already a quite “galant” Italian minuet, almost foreshadowing Sammartini, with harmonic twists of charmingly naive coloration in the middle section. The finale is presented asa brisk concerto movement, whose pregnant and animated principal subject could have been picked up from Vivaldi. Perhaps the most noteworthy work on our record is the sonata from Vivaldi’s Op. 13 “II Pastor fido, Sonates pour la Musette, Viele, Flûte, Hautbois, Violon avec la Basse Continue”. The publication appeared conspicuously late, in 1737 in Paris; on the other hand the genrelike character of the sonatas and the equally genre-like ornamentation in the instrumentation more probably indicate an early period of origin - if, that is, the ornaments, appropriate to the bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy, are not an invention of the publisher, in whose French milieu they are essentially more fitting than in Vivaldi’s own Venetian surroundings. The G minor sonata is the most “serious” of the six works, and that which bears the least pastoral character: in form it differs from the traditional sonata da chiesa only in that there is at the beginning a dance-like 3/8 Vivace, a short movement quickly flashing by, which in the middle section plays very wittily with irregular phrase construction. This is followed by a lively “fugue” for two voices with an obbligato counterpoint. The third movement, a charming 9/8 Siciliano, is the first to affirm the pastoral sphere suggested by the title of the publication. The finale is a spirited concerto movement on one of those energy-laden, pathetic-gesture minor themes which make Vivaldi’s style so unmistakable - and which had already established his fame among his contemporaries. Ludwig Finscher The recorder and recorder music in the early 18 th century The period to which the present recording is dedicated marks the final flowering of recorder playing and recorder music in baroque Europe. While in Italy at the end of the 17th century the century-old tradition of the instrument was already beginning to fade, supplanted above all by the violin as the new expressive solo instrument par excellence, the “flauto dolce” experienced a last flowering in Germany, France and England - particularly in England, where middle-class domestic music had already so favoured the instrument throughout the 17th century that on the Continent it could be called simply “flûte d’Angleterre”. The pre-requisites for the new blossoming of recorder music were created in the second half of the 17th century by the adaptation of the instrument, rich in tradition, to the new tonal ideal of the high and late Baroque, the transformation of its “quiet, delightful harmony” (Michael Praetorius) into a stronger, brighter and sharper sound, which could assert itself in the multi-coloured orchestra of about 1700 and at the same time was suitable to the technical demands of the increasingly virtuosic chamber music. This metamorphosis of the instrument seems to have emanated shortly after 1650 from France, where by means of technical alterations the compass was extended to more than two octaves, the tone was made fuller and more penetrating but at the same time clearer and “sweeter”, so that the designation “flauto dolce” was now fully justified. The new type of flute spread with manifest speed towards England and Germany in particular. At the same time the recorder “family”, which had satisfied the tonal ideal of the Renaissance and early Baroque, was gradually reduced to the diskant and alt recorders, of which the diskant (whose compass was f to g’”) was by far the more prevalent - the same instrument which best maintained the function of carrying the upper part in the baroque orchestra and which in chamber music for solo instruments was most versatile in use and most easily called upon for alternative casting, as the numerous headings for “flauto o violino” etc. indicate. The instruments in our recordings were constructed after two models of exceptional quality, instruments of the London flute-maker P. I. Bressan at the beginning of the 18th century. Both are of boxwood. Bressan’s F recorder (in pitch about 3/4 tone below today’s concert pitch) is decorated in ivory, and its tone is unusually full and strong. The “fourth flute” (“flûte de quatre”), a rare but attractive variety of late recorder development, is built, as its name suggests, a fourth higher, i.e. in b flat. Its tone is unusually “round” and powerful. Both instruments clearly show that decisive characteristic of late Baroque flute-making, which with mechanised mass manufacture is inevitably lost - the individuality of tone, the pronounced “character” of every single instrument built slowly and lovingly by hand. Although the recorder as an orchestral and chamber music instrument at the start of the 18th century - above all in France - found a dangerous and eventually victorious rival in the technically ever-improving transverse flute, which was forging ahead, at all events the chamber-music flute literature of the first half of the 18th century is certainly to be understood primarily as recorder literature - which did not, according to the principle of freedom of instrumental interchange, prevent recorder and transverse flute, violin and oboe being used instead of one another. While the Italian flute literature of the time is not very rich and largely concentrates on alternative versions (“flauto o violino”), in Germany and France it attained a richer repertoire - the works of Telemann, Dieupart and Jean-Baptiste Loeillet are especially outstanding here (cf. also Das alte Werk, SAWT 9482-A: Recorder music circa 1700 on original instruments). The centre of recorder playing and recorder composition in chamber music seems to have been London - not for nothing were most of the flute tutors, and most of the flute works of Italian composers also, brought out here, but also those numerous (musically mostly primitive) arrangements of popular songs, opera arias and abridgements of whole operas for recorder, which are an infallible indication of an instrument’s culture, branching out in all strata of amateur music-making. Of the works in our recording two - the Corelli and Barsanti - appeared in London, a third - the Bigaglia - in Amsterdam, whose music publishing world had close ties with that of the English metropolis. Ludwig Finscher (translated by Lionel Salter)