Michael Talbot

Bitti's twelve 'Cambridge'sonatas, presented to Cardinal Ottoboni, represent the 'late', galant Bitti, full of lovingly sculpted ornamental detail for the violin but with the same resourceful harmony...

The eleventh sonata, in five movements, is one of the most elaborate in the set. Its first movement (A tempo giusto) is very ornate and makes attractive use of syncopation. The second movement (Vivace...

The twelfth sonata, in four movements, makes a fitting climax to the set. Its first movement (Vivace) is somewhat corrente-like, with delicately traced passage-work. The Andante that follows is distin...

This sonata in B flat major was only recently identified as a sonata by Bitti, since its manuscript in Dresden lacks the name of the composer. Bitti's authorship is not in doubt, however, especially s...

The present work consists of four movements in the tempo-sequence slow - fast - slow - fast: the 'classic' structure associated especially with Corelli. The slow movements are lyrical, the fast moveme...

This four movement sonata exemplifies Albicastro's mastery of the Corellian style.

This unusually elaborate sonata, consisting of seven movements (or sections), survives uniquely in Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, where it forms part of the Di Martinelli family archive.

A manuscript of this sonata was discovered in the collection of the Rose family, Lairds of Kilravock (near Inverness). Copied in a late 17th- or early 18th-century hand and inserted into a keyboard bo...

Only a handful of Schreivogel's compositions for his instrument have survived. Among them is this sparkling three-movement sonata for violin and continuo in E flat major, evidently composed late in hi...

La Libertà is the most original, and among the most attractive, of Maurice Greene's secular vocal compositions on Italian texts. Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he wrote it as a composit...

Antoine Favre (c.1670-c.1739) was a composer of rare ability whose few surviving collections, all published during the 1730s, have hitherto remained unknown not only to performers but also to the majo...

The sonatas of the Venetian composer and priest Diogenio Bigaglia (c.1676-c.1745) have long found favour among recorder players in particular. This group of three sonatas for violin (or alternative tr...

Since it does not appear in Ottoboni's Trattenimenti poetici and fails to exhibit one of his most consistent stylistic ‘trademarks' - the use of end-rhyme throughout the recitative stanzas (i.e....

Both cantatas are typical specimens of Albinoni's style. The little flourishes of conjunct demisemiquavers seen in bar 13 of the opening aria of Vorrei che lo sapessi and bar 14 of that of Senza il co...

This is an example of a cantata morale - a cantata that, for once, does not explore the pleasures and pains of love among the shepherds and nymphs of Arcadia but offers timeless advice on moral conduc...

The cantata's subject, treated with a soupçon of humour and originality (by being combined with the unrelated theme of sleep), is the familiar one of a lover protesting his fidelity to his beloved. Th...

The poetic theme of the cantata is the well-worn one of unrequited love. In the opening aria, the singer challenges the God of Love to battle. This is a true aria di battaglia in which the singer mimi...

This cantata, from an important manuscript in Berlin containing 18 Albinoni cantatas for soprano and continuo, is in effect a praise-song addressed to Isabella Tarquinia Ottoboni, aunt of Cardinal Pie...

This cantata, from an important manuscript in Berlin containing 18 Albinoni cantatas for soprano and continuo, is on the subject of the lover's separation from his (or it could be her) beloved, one of...

This cantata, from an important manuscript in Berlin containing 18 Albinoni cantatas for soprano and continuo, is on the subject of the parting of lovers. Dalinda, forced to part from Tirsi, vows fide...