CHICAGO BAROQUE ENSEMBLE
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Sonatas by two of these composers were featured in the season opener of the CBE, a solid member of the city’s early-music triumvirate (the other two being the Newberry Consort and the Orpheus Band). Both Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768) and Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764) were exceptional violinists and were supposedly pupils of Corelli. In their youth they traveled up and down their native Italy, making frequent stops in Rome, which at the time was still the musical capital of the world. After compiling thick resumes, the two musicians, who might have been acquaintances, settled in the northern countries, no doubt billing themselves as the latest sensations from Italy.
Veracini chose burgeoning London. In all likelihood, this colorful Florentine–who, according to a program note, was once so crazed by his prolonged study of music and alchemy that he leapt from a third-story window–regaled the dour British with exhibitionist pieces based on tricks he’d learned in Rome. The Sonata in D Major for Violin and Cello (op. 2 no. 1)–played by the CBE’s Christopher Verrette and John Mark Rozendaal, with harpsichord continuo from Stephen Alltop–is in the mold of the chamber sonatas for which Corelli was celebrated. It has six contrasting sections and of course provides plenty of virtuosic passages for the soloists. Veracini’s fondness for contrapuntalism is also evident, though subdued. The sonata is really a playful and pleasant divertimento–so pleasant, in fact, that one wonders why an English critic at the time deemed Veracini’s music too wild and flighty. If there were any complaints, it should have been leveled against the monotonous stretches that betray the vanity of an ace performer who writes his own music. (There’s a similarly self-indulgent streak in Paganini and Kreisler.)
Handel’s fellow Arcadians looked at it as a lesson to tyrants everywhere, but Handel seemed more interested in the gamut of emotions expressed by the heroine as she beseeches the gods and her countrymen to avenge her. His secular cantata is theatrical to the core. And Bedi, with eloquent support from the CBE’s players, made it a coloratura showcase, limning a proud, defiant, yet tenderly pleading Lucretia. Her voice was pinched in some of the florid, fluttery passages, but it negotiated the lower runs with ease, enhancing the sense of melodrama. Let’s hope other obscure Handel cantatas will soon receive this kind of thoughtful revival.
