Customer Reviews

Arcangelo Corelli: Sonatas 1, 3, 6, 11 & 12 "La Follia" for Violin, Cello & Harpsichord, Op. V

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Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713): Sonate a Violino o Cimbalo op. V (Numbers 1, 3, 7, 11 and 12 "La Follia"). Performed by Sigiswald Kuijken, violin (Giovanni Grancino, 1700), Wieland Kuijken, violoncello (Andrea Amati, 1570) and Robert Kohnen, harpsichord (Joannes Daniel Dulcken, Antwerp 1755). Recorded in April 1984 in the "Chapelle Royale" of the Protestant Church in Brussels, Belgium. Reissued in 2006 as Accent 10033. Total playing time: just over 55 minutes.

After a first listening to this CD, I laid it aside for a while because I found the strict historicity and the somewhat hard sound to be a little off-putting. However, later, on repeated listenings, I have come to see that this recording has a number of merits, not the least of which being Sigiswald Kuijken's magnificent performance of music which is known to qualify its composer as a perfectionist. Kuijken not only plays a historical instrument, he also plays it in historical style, refusing to rest the violin under his chin and instead just leaning it on his shoulder. And of course he uses gut strings tuned to historical temperament, which, although the Accent booklet does not give any information, is, for Rome around 1700, usually around A = 390 Hz. And Kuijken carefully avoids anything approaching the modern use of vibrato, all of which adds up to a sound which, on first hearing, can jar on modern ears. But once you have got used to the low "tessitura" and the somewhat "blunt" sound of the lower notes, it is perfectly possible, as I have discovered, to begin to enjoy and appreciate what Kuijken is doing here, namely giving a cultured and virtuosic performance of a selection of Corelli's most famous sonatas while using, at least in part, the decorations indicated in early printed versions of these pieces. He is accompanied by his brother Wieland on a rather dark-sounding cello and by Robert Kohnen on a Dutch harpsichord of the period, and all this in the rather sober acoustics of an empty chapel, and it is the overall impression that this sound makes which, in the end, robs the disc, to my mind, of its fifth star: there are much more pleasant-sounding recordings of this material available from major labels, but I suspect none of them is so historically well-informed as this one from Accent, which was, until recently, a specialist artists' label producing material chosen by the performers with little regard to its chances on the market.

Good classical music but I thought I was getting a CD that was mostly harpsicord and I still haven't heard any after listening to the whole thing twice.Very disapointing in that way!