The sensational success of Arcangelo Corelli's violin music at the beginning of the eighteenth century inspired a host of imitators, two of whom are unearthed here by Italian Baroque violinist
Alessandra Talamo and the historical-instrument
Ensemble Respighi. One, Nicola Francesco Haim, later went on to fame as one of Handel's librettists in London. The music of both composers is attractive but a bit undifferentiated; the sonatas presented here are all in four movements, nearly all of them studiously executing plain binary forms. The two composers seem to have noted but not fully appreciated the power of the emerging distinction between church sonata and chamber sonata; Haim's sonatas bear Italian tempo indications but are called chamber sonatas and conclude with movements in the gigue or jig rhythm. Martino Bitti's sonatas are perhaps a bit denser and more sophisticated than Haim's, but there is no sharp distinction between the two composers' styles. The chief attraction of the disc is the playing of
Talamo, whose tone is steely and whose technique is commanding. It would have been nice to hear more about what level of ornament was written into the music and what
Talamo added, but whatever the case, she elegantly fuses very rapid ornaments into the structure of the little binary movements of these composers. The varied three-member continuo group of Federico Ferri, Stefano Rocco, and
Daniele Proni breaks up the sequence of similar pieces a bit by switching off among archlute, theorbo, and Baroque guitar. This disc doesn't deliver anything for the casual listener that wouldn't be contained in a good Corelli recording, but it is certainly of interest to Baroque performance specialists.