GIUSEPPE TORELLI

Every so often one encounters a composer whose innovations had an enormous impact on music but whom subsequent events overshadowed. One such is Giuseppe Torelli, a great innovator who deserves to be credited with much of the early development of the Concerto. This fascinating disc includes the Concerti Op. 8, a landmark opus which deserves special attention, for it influenced a whole new generation of composers including Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach. These historically accurate performances give us a chance to experience these ground-breaking concertos as they would have been heard at the time, and will prove popular with scholars and fans of early music alike.

Simon Standage has made over thirty recordings with Collegium Musicum 90 on the Chandos label.

Collegium Musicum 90 is one of today’s premiere period ensembles. It regularly receives outstanding reviews for its Chandos recordings.



Giuseppe Torelli was a native of Verona. He moved to Bologna (a place with a strong claim to be the birthplace of the concerto) in the early 1680s, and was elected to the Accademia filarmonica on 27 June 1684. From time to time he played the viola in the San Petronio cappella, but was often absent on freelance work as a violinist (he was paid for only fifteen days work in 1691). He is known to have visited Amsterdam in 1697 or 1698, and was briefly Konzertmeister at the court of Georg Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenberg-Ansbach, where he taught the violin to the young Johann Georg Pisendel, later Konzertmeister of the famous Dresden orchestra. After a stay in Vienna for a few months in the winter of 1699-1700 he returned to Bologna, where he spent his last years. His Op. 2 – twelve ‘concerti da camera’, published in 1686 are still in the early Bolognese trio sonata format, but the six ‘concerti à quattro’ of Op. 5 (1692) are a real landmark, being the first printed instrumental music that calls explicity for more than one player to a part. Surprisingly, however, they are laid out for four-part string orchestra with no solo passages at all. The idea that a concerto should feature one or more soloists was something that Torelli developed later, at first rather tentatively in Op.l 6 (1698), in which only two of the twelve concertos have brief solo episodes for violin, and above all in Op. 8, published posthumously in 1709 by his brother Felice. This set has six fully developed three-movement solo violin concertos and six for two violins and proved his most influential work.

"... the period performances here are first class. The rather more conventional Trumpet Concertos are also in confident hands, and the accompaniments throughout are characteristically stylish and the Chandos recording first rate."

The Penguin Guide - 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings 2011-12

For what will hopefully be the first of several, Simon Standage has chosen to mix seven of the concertos from the composer’s Op. 8 set with a concerto and two Sinfonias involving trumpets. The printed set includes concertos for one and two violins with continuo, and Standage is well partnered by Catherine Weiss in the latter. The recording, as we expect from Chandos is exemplary allowing clear representations of both the players and the acoustic they are enjoying. I look forward very much to the next instalment!
This is another enlightening disc that Baroque enthusiasts will welcome.
…persuasive and stylish…
Simon Standage and Catherine Weiss are well-matched in the double concertos, from hair-raising momentum to lovely slow-movement dialogue… Crispian Steele-Perkins plays with a rare lightness and delicacy… Apart from the ‘Christmas Concerto’ not a note is otherwise currently available on disc; such undeserved neglect earns this disc a particularly warm welcome.
Over the years Chandos and Collegium Musicum 90 have done Telemann proud, nowhere more so than in this bright and lean recording…
…everywhere their sound is bright, crisp and open, and their sense of style impeccable…
The recording and annotation are of the highest standard and of the performances it might be said that if they are ever bettered in any respect, we and Albinoni will indeed be fortunate.


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