The Italian violinist and composer Carlo Zuccari (1704-1792) worked from 1741 in Milan, where he was the leader of Giovanni Battista Sammartini’s famous orchestra. In the 1760s he was in London as member of the Italian opera orchestra and published there his “True Method of Playing an Adagio”); in 1765 he returned to Milan.

The ’Sonate a Violino, e Basso ò Cembalo’, his most important and significant work, were published in Milan in 1747. Zuccari prefers here the three movement slow-fast-fast setting, elaborate melodic lines and bass parts that maintained a supporting role rather than involvement with the musical themes. Despite their baroque structure, the first signs of the gallant style can be noted, both in the treatment of the bass, which is rich in harmony with pedals, delays and anticipations and in the writing for the violin, which is bristling with diminishments and embellishments.

Plamena Nikitassova, born in 1975 in Varna (Bulgaria), studied the baroque violin with Chiara Banchini at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She performs with ensembles such as La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, Ensemble 415, Freitagsakademie and Le Parlement de Musique under Martin Gester, Chiara Banchini, Rudolf Lutz, Konrad Junghänel and Jordi Savall. From 2013 she will be concert-master of the Baroque Orchestra of the J. S. Bach-Foundation in St. Gallen.