Corelli: Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1-12 - Complete | Arcangelo Corelli, Andrew Manze, ... |...

Corelli: Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1-12 - Complete | Arcangelo Corelli, Andrew Manze, ... | Music to delight the head--and heart

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Corelli: Violin So...

	Corelli: Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, Nos. 1-12 - Complete Arcangelo Corelli, Andrew Manze, ... Harmonia Mundi, 2003 average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Corelli's Op. 5 Violin Sonatas have always been admired by chamber music fans; there are a couple of good recordings of them already available. But this new one by Baroque specialist and virtuoso Andrew Manze and harpsichordist Richard Egarr presents the sonatas in such a bright, exciting, and improvisatory light that they seem brand new. During the composer's lifetime, these sonatas were widely played and tremendously influential; there's a good chance that it was assumed that virtuosi took what was written on the page as a starting point for embellishing and sheer showing off. Manze is breathtaking--fast, articulate, conscious of the genuinely good tunes some of these sonatas contain--and his variances from the written music are thrilling. Egarr knows how to embellish too, and he matches Manze every step of the way. If you're wondering if 131 minutes of only two instruments can keep your interest, don't worry. This will. --Robert Levine

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Captivating

I usually think of Corelli as nice "background music," pleasant, but without the emotional depth of Vivaldi, Bach or Handel. However, with this disc I find myself stopping and losing myself in the beautiful tones of Manze's baroque violin. The playing is superb and subtle, revealing these pieces as intimate and poetic. Harmonia Mundi's recording quality is excellent as well. Highly recommended. I can't wait to see what the venerable English Concert does under Manze's new leadership.

Music to delight the head--and heart

Confession: I have never loved these sonatas. Respected them, yes, of course; but with a polite detachment that their exclusively intellectual and technical achievements seemed to merit.

Well, this album changed all that. It's a masterly performance, effortlessly virtuosic, that shows forth the music in all its lapidary clarity. More than that, though: it is also luminously expressive, replete with moments of such unadorned and lyrical tenderness that the heart opens up, amazed.

For those who think they know this music no less than those who know they do not, Manze and Egarr's achievement is an exquisite revelation.

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What The Baroque Alone Can Do

There's something in the greatest of baroque music that it alone can do - a kind of grace in suspended passion, angular sour biting lines that somehow are sweet without being sickly sweet, a mathematical precision that is not arid. It's all here in Arcangelo Corelli's great and generous gift to us all.

I think this music is best listened to on a night when one is physically ill or one is simply too spiritually ill to go much furthur without some sort of stroking of the soul. When played at such times Corelli asks nothing and gives everything - but what a sweet everything he gives!

Full of light and air, a transfiguration that is not heavy, a thoughtfulness that avoids the perils and pains of excessive introspection. There's a reason why people call this music humane and if you'd like to find out why purchase this double CD set and put it on when the burdens of your humanity are a bit too heavy.

What does the Book of Job tell us? That humans are born to trouble as the sparks fly. Here's music that's a true comfort for the likes of Job while he waits for the answers to his rightful questionings.

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Outstanding musicality

Like a lot of Italian High Baroque music, the scores for these sonatas are rather minimalist, and played strictly as written, these pieces can come across as drab harmony exercises. Manze and Egarr take the score as merely a starting point, in true High Baroque fashion, improvising with an impressive combination of stylistic accuracy, control, and passion that one virtually never hears in classical music.

The fire and immediacy of these performances is exceptional - the sheer joy of the gigue from the A major sonata (no. 9) is something that will stay with you for a while, and the floating, delicate lyricism they give to the slow movements is simply haunting.

I've always thought that Corelli was, with the exceptions of Bach and perhaps Scarlatti, the best composer of the Baroque era, and this set stands comfortably with Trevor Pinnock's magisterial set of the Op. 6 concerti grossi as proof.

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pure italian baroque

this is really fine music. corelli is the paragon of the "italian" style of baroque (at least until vivaldi caught bach's attention), and these sonatas are perhaps finer than the italianate sonatas by handel. there is marvelous poetry and variety in these pieces, brought forward by the spare instrumentation of violin, bass and harpsichord, and everything is wrapped in corelli's creamy, effortless, halcyon musical world.

my reservation is that manze at times takes these pieces with a raspy vigor that is better left for tartini. the "folias" variations in particular, while tremendous fun and inspiringly ornamented, omit that key (and historically correct) baroque attribute known as decorum. the equally virtuosic recordings by elizabeth wallfisch have the edge on that point.