Will the wholesale rediscovery of Baroque music eventually slow down? Surely, but it's hard to see the endpoint right now. This disc by French Baroque violinist
Hélène Schmitt offers music by the virtually forgotten Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli, a student of Corelli who arrived in England in 1719. His music is clearly influenced by the virtuoso styles of his teacher but takes them a step in the direction of the lighter, more seductive mood of the galant era. The 1713 painting by Sebastiano Ricci that is examined in the booklet is an exact counterpart for the music recorded here, and this series on France's Alpha label is highly recommended to art lovers -- they offer a sort of instant crash course in art history and in the relationships among the arts in French culture. There are six sonatas for violin and continuo, all but one in four movements (one of the four-movement pieces has an interpolated guitar finale by another composer), generally following the Corellian church sonata model of abstract fast and slow movements rather than dances. The performances here are magical.
Schmitt, whose pictures in the booklet have the same soft beauty as the figures in the painting under discussion in the notes, is a superb young Baroque violinist, improvising ornaments here with an appropriately light touch. The continuo group has a cello, a guitar, and a harpsichord (or organ) -- it's unusually large, but it fits this music beautifully; the addition of the guitar gives a languid feel that rounds off the edges and catches the peculiar flavor of Carbonelli's music, fancy, relaxed, and sweet. The close-up miking picks up a good deal of instrumental noise -- listen to the music in close quarters or on headphones, and you'll find it distracting.