Francesco Pasquale Ricci

Sinfonie

Francesco Pasquale Ricci straddled two worlds: Italy, his homeland, where he received his education and where he had his first professional experiences, and Europe, which would be the stage of his bold artistic affirmation and the consolidation of a vast and complex network of personal relationships. Ricci's European excursion, occasionally interrupted by visits to Italy, lasted sixteen years. While not as lengthy as that of many of his countrymen and ending, unlike the careers of many Italians, with a definitive return to the land of his birth, his European travels were no less important for his career. Thanks to this experience, Ricci was able to establish an internationalreputation and find, on a personal level, the stimulus and the occasions to bring to maturity his personality as a composer, filled with the aspirations and contradictions typical not only of artists, but of all creative men of his time. In this critical edition, 12 symphonies have been chosen in order to illustrate characteristics and general problems related to the entire corpus of these works. The Archivio della Sinfonia Milanese series is intended to bring together the symphonic repertoire in eighteenth-century Lombardy to encourage experts to study it, musicians to perform it and draw the attention of a wider audience. In particular, the series intends to publish the major works by progressive, European-oriented composers of the period from Milan or who were active there and in the Lombardy area, giving pride of place to compositions which have not yet been published in our time.