The Villa Buonvisi-Webb in Bagni di Lucca’s historic heart was the venue last night of an enjoyable concert of baroque music given by Marcello Rizzello on the oboe accompanied by Tommaso Nicoli on the harpsichord.
The programme started with a sonata for oboe and keyboard by one of the formulators of the Galante style, Giovanni Battista Sammartini. The synchrony between the two performers was precise, balance and acoustics were excellent and the two musicians fully displayed idiomatic accord with eighteenth century musical style.
The next item titled ‘Ballo di Mantova’ was a harpsichord solo by Giovanni Battista Ferrini (1601 – 1674) an Italian composer, organist and harpsichordist. It was a gentle piece with variations and well-suited to the timbre of Nicoli’s instrument. I had not come across Ferrini before but in the absence of any programme notes at the concert (an omission due to a print problem) found out the following about him.
Giovan Battista Ferrini was organist at the Church of Saint-Louis-des-Français in Rome from 1619 and at the main church of the Oratorians in Rome, the Chiesa Nuova (Santa Maria in Valicella), from 1623 to 1653. He may have been part of the close entourage of Girolamo Frescobaldi and seems to have been an illustrious harpsichordist, known as such by his colleagues with the nickname of “Giovan Battista Della Spinetta”. Interestingly for the times Ferrini composed no religious music and his compositions remained unpublished until recently.
Telemann, unfairly denigrated by some unappreciative listeners as a ‘note spinner’, followed with a piece from his ‘Essercizii (sic) musicali. Here we were re-joined by the oboist who showed admirable dexterity in his ornamentations of the score.
Nicoli then had a second soloist spot with three items selected from Handel’s keyboard suites and ending with that great passacaglia from the seventh, very well-played and familiar to many Italian listeners as a piece which used to be heard (on a harp) during broadcasting intervals on Italian RAI 1 television.
Handel’s music concluded the concert with a sonata in four movements originally for flute but transcribed for oboe. Rizzello fully showed the baroque oboe’s fine dynamic range which was enhanced by his projection of the sound against the cavernous walls of the palazzo.
The encore was the second movement of this sonata.
All in all it we passed a delightful late evening spent in listening to good music in the spacious hall of Bagni di Lucca’s most magnificent renaissance villa. It demonstrated how, after a late start in the field, Italy is producing a fine second generation of historically informed performers replete with prodigious talent and enthusiasm. After all it was Italy which was the principal germinator of most of the newest musical trends in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and surely it must be that country which is closest to some of the supreme traditions of western classical music.
