BALDASSARRE GALUPPI

In the third of a series of 10 CD’s containing Galuppi’s 90 sonatas, we present another eight of these masterpieces. All music lovers should sample these seminal works, which made Galuppi one of the greatest composers of his day;all the more strange that he should have fallen into such obscurity. All the sonatas on this disc are unpublished and have been reconstructed for performance by Peter Seivewright from the original manuscripts.

Peter Seivewright has spent a good deal of time on a research mission to Venice and other European cities, retrieving the unpublished manuscript scores and preparing performing editions.  One of the great revelations brought about by this work is that Galuppi, far from being a straightforward baroque composer writing for the traditional keyboard instruments (harpsichord and clavichord), which have been employed in all previous recordings, actually waited until the piano had been developed before creating most of his phenomenal output. Many of the original manuscripts are titled "Sonata for Pianoforte", and much of the writing, making substantial use of the sustain pedal, simply do not work on the earlier instruments.