Handel: Complete Violin Sonatas

Complete Violin Sonatas

BOJAN ČIČIĆ Baroque violin

STEVEN DEVINE 1756 Kirckman harpsichord

George Frideric Handel

(1685-1759)

Complete Violin Sonatas

BOJAN ČIČIĆ | STEVEN DEVINE

17

5

Allegro in G major HWV 407

Sonata in G major HWV 358 6 I. Allegro 7 II. Adagio 8 III. Allegro

[3:19] [2:38] [2:26] [3:42] [1:32] [1:57] [0:43] [2:39]

Sonata in D minor, Op. 1 No. 1 HWV 359a I. Grave II. Allegro 11 III. Adagio 12 IV. Allegro 9

10

I. Larghetto II. Allegro 15 III. Adagio 16 IV. Allegro 14

Sonata in E major, Op. 1 No. 15 HWV 373 22 I. Adagio 23 II. Allegro 24 III. Largo 25 IV. Allegro

[2:05] [2:36] [1:14] [2:25]

26

Sonatina from Il trionfo del Tempo HWV 46b

[1:13]

27

Andante in A minor HWV 412

[1:58]

28

Fantasia in A major HWV 406

[2:13]

[2:22] [1:44] [0:55] [2:34]

Sonata in A major, Op. 1 No. 3 HWV 361 29 I. Andante [2:27] 30 II. Allegro [2:00] 31 III. Adagio [0:45] 32 IV. Allegro [2:31]

[1:58] [1:46] [0:46] [1:41]

Total playing time

Sonata in G minor, Op. 1 No. 6 HWV 364a 13

[1:32] [2:25] [1:20] [2:53]

19

Sonata in D major, Op. 1 No. 13 HWV 371 I. Affettuoso II. Allegro 3 III. Larghetto 4 IV. Allegro

I. Adagio II. Allegro 20 III. Largo 21 IV. Allegro 18

Harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman, London 1756

2

[3:26]

Sonata in A major, Op. 1 No. 14 HWV 372

Baroque violin by Giovanni Grancino, Milan 1703

1

Allegro in C minor HWV 408

[66:06]

The artists gratefully acknowledge the generosity of John Adrian Osborn, without which this recording would not have been possible.

Notes on the music As a performer, Handel is mainly remembered for his reputation as a keyboard player. His first professional job was as an organist in Halle, and there is a story of a competition in keyboard playing with Alessandro Scarlatti at Venice in 1707; four years later, in Rinaldo, his first London opera, Handel gave himself an obligato harpsichord solo in one of the arias, and from 1735 onwards he was routinely visible as a soloist for the organ concertos in his London theatre oratorios. There is another side to the story, however, which is recorded in two anecdotes about his early career.

Johann Mattheson, an eyewitness, described Handel’s first professional post after leaving home: In Summer 1703 he came to Hamburg, rich in talent and good will. … At first he played second violin in the opera orchestra, and behaved as if he couldn’t count up to five – for he was by nature much inclined to dry humour.1

His biographer commented that ‘though he was well acquainted with the nature and management of the violin; yet his chief practice, and greatest mastery was on the organ and harpsichord.’3 This accidentally confirms that Handel had been trained as a violinist, and therefore wrote his violin music against a background of first-hand practical experience. His violin sonatas with basso continuo have some technical challenges but they do not attract attention by flashy virtuosity: rather, they are flowing and agreeable chamber music, in which the violinist is in musical conversation with the keyboard player. The latter may on occasion have been Handel himself, but regrettably there are no documented records of the performances.

We can, however, trace the historical path of his music for violin through various associations, and from the types of manuscript paper that he used at different Then, in the first published biography of Handel, we find this story about an incident in periods. From Handel’s years in Italy there survives a ‘Sonata a Cinque’ – apparently a Rome, about four years later: chamber-scale violin concerto – but no violin Corelli himself complained of the difficulty he sonatas. This is rather surprising, because found in playing [Handel’s] Overtures. … Several sonatas would probably have complemented fruitless attempts Handel had one day made to his continuo-accompanied chamber cantatas instruct him in the manner of executing these in programmes of private performances spirited passages. Piqued at the tameness with for Roman patrons such as Ruspoli and which he still played them, he snatches the Ottoboni; furthermore, Handel apparently had instrument out of his hand; and, to convince him how little he understood them, played the passages good working relationships with the leading himself.2 violinists in Rome, Arcangelo Corelli and

Pietro Castrucci. The earliest known sonata

by Handel for violin and continuo is that in G major hwv 358, probably written c.1710 for Jean-Baptiste Farinel, the Konzertmeister at the court of Hanover. This is in three movements: his subsequent sonatas follow the more conventional Italianate pattern of four movements, in parallel to the recitative– aria–recitative–aria scheme for cantatas. No instrument is specified on the autograph of the sonata but the range is clearly that of the violin; there is one notational eccentricity in the third movement which perhaps suggests some cause of private amusement between composer and violinist.

The mature period of Handel’s violin sonatas is represented by three four-movement works, in D minor, A major and G minor hwv 359a, 361 and 364a, written in the mid 1720s and all happily surviving in his autograph.

They display the same musical fluency and inventiveness as the arias from his operas of the period. The G minor and D minor sonatas were apparently written as a pair: Handel wrote ‘Violino solo’ above the first and ‘Sonata 2’ above the second. Two fully composed movements from the same period Allegro in C minor hwv 408 and Andante in A minor hwv 412, also in Handel’s autograph and intended for violin, appear to be independent compositions: they may be survivors from otherwise lost sonatas, but they are worthy of performance on their own.

Handel marked the autograph of the opening of the G minor sonata with an adaptation for viola da gamba and during this period in the mid 1720s he composed complementary sonatas for ‘Flauto’ (recorder, hwv 360, 362); he may also have adapted some of his earlier sonatas to be suitable for oboe and flute.

Clearly at the time there was a performance context requiring such sonatas, and it is rather frustrating that we have no evidence for the circumstances. One possibility is they were contributions to private concerts for the royal family at the time when Handel was actively involved as Music Master to the Princesses.

Strong contenders for the soloists in the violin sonatas from the 1720s are Castrucci (now in London as leader of the opera house orchestra) and Matthew Dubourg.

By 1730 Handel had accumulated a repertory of sonatas for solo instrument and continuo, though he did not always specify the instrument on his manuscripts. This situation is confused by a music edition entitled Sonates pour un Traversiere un Violon ou Hautbois Con Basso Continuo Composées par G. F. Handel. A Amsterdam Chez Jeanne Roger. In spite of appearances, this originated from the London music publisher John Walsh about the year 1733. It was a collection of twelve sonatas, almost certainly produced without Handel’s co-operation and gathered from whatever sources the publisher could find, though it included

Notes on the music hwv 361 correctly designated for violin. The edition soon received a new title page, as Solos For a German Flute a Hoboy or Violin With a Thorough Bass for the Harpsicord or Bass Violin Compos’d by Mr. Handel. (In newspaper advertisements this collection gradually assumed the dignity of Handel’s ‘Op. 1’.) Some of the solo instruments are wrongly named, probably in an effort to equalise the attraction to amateur performers: for example, in the ‘Roger’ edition hwv 364 is designated for oboe. More seriously, in order to fulfil the expectation from precedents in editions of works by Italian composers that published sets should contain six or twelve works, two violin sonatas were added in the ‘Roger’ edition (as Sonatas 10 and 12) whose attribution to Handel is uncertain at best, and in the ‘Walsh’ edition these were replaced with two others of equally doubtful provenance. However, no alternative composers have as yet been positively identified, and the present anthology includes the two sonatas from the ‘Roger’ set (in A major hwv 372 and E major hwv 373). The situation between composer and publisher changed with the death of Walsh in 1736: his son – also John – seems to have established himself quickly as Handel’s regular and approved publisher, and perhaps he had initiated the Sonates edition as an initial step to opening negotiations. In spite of the closer relationship between composer and publisher, the Solos continued in print without revision

throughout Handel’s lifetime, and for a long time afterwards continued to be regarded as authoritative, until critical attention was applied to the music with reference to other sources.

was a named beneficiary in Handel’s will. And, retrospectively, this may also reinforce the possibility that Dubourg, then just starting out on his career, was the recipient of the violin sonatas from the 1720s.

Although Handel’s involvement with solo sonatas was most concentrated in the 1720s, and no further works appeared in print, that was not the end of the story for his violin sonatas. The sonata in D major hwv 371, his most impressive contribution to the repertory, was composed about a quarter of a century later, around 1749–50. Rather curiously, Handel headed the autograph ‘Sonata a Violino e Cembalo di G. F. Handel’, as if to deliberately exclude the possibility of a cello or gamba on the continuo line, as may have been the practice sometimes in the 1720s. Although, as already noted, we have no formal record of the occasions or performers relevant to the violin sonatas, a newspaper advertisement for a benefit concert for the singer Eleanora Oldmixon at Hickford’s Room in London on 21 April 1749 included a line that ‘The Performance will be conducted by Mr. Dubourg, who will Play a Solo’. Perhaps Handel’s D major sonata was that ‘Solo’. Dubourg certainly had long-standing professional connections with Handel, as leader of his orchestra in Dublin and subsequently sometimes in London; furthermore, the personal relationship is confirmed by the circumstance that Dubourg

Included with the sonatas in this recording are some other pieces which illustrate Handel’s relationship to the violin and violin-playing, though not formally in the context of the continuo-accompanied sonata. In March– April 1737 he introduced an Italian oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e della Verità, into his London season at Covent Garden theatre.

This was a much-revised version of his first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, composed for performance at Rome thirty years previously, in which the story proceeded by interactions between allegorical characters.

At the start of Part Two in 1737 Handel retained a scene in which Il Piacere (Pleasure) introduces La Bellezza (Beauty) to the attractions of his court. Pleasure’s description is interrupted by Beauty, who asks ‘But, hark!

What sounds are these I hear?’, to which Pleasure replies: A Youth with more than Magic Might, The Soul awakens to Delight, With his harmonious strains.

(The English translations given here are from the printed libretto that was sold for the 1737 performances.) At Rome in 1707 the ‘Youth’ had been Handel himself, playing the solo

part in a concerto-style movement for organ and orchestra. In 1737 he replaced this with a Sonatina for ‘Violino Solo’ with figured bass accompaniment. Perhaps at that time he substituted the violin for the organ because he was already affected by the ‘palsy’ which was reported to have prevented him from playing the harpsichord or organ a month later, though his performances that season were still advertised as ‘With Concertos on the Organ and other Instruments’. Whatever the situation that prompted the change of focus, it is interesting that Handel (though no longer a ‘Youth’) chose to feature the violin in this way; the violinist involved to represent the ‘Youth’ was no doubt his orchestral leader for the season, probably John Clegg.

The Allegro in G major hwv 407 comes from the same period as the ‘Sonatina’: Handel wrote this music on a page of manuscript paper where, for some reason, he also wrote the date ‘1738’. Both the circumstances and the musical content of this piece are unusual.

The manuscript leaf is from a discarded violin performing part for Handel’s opera Serse: the new piece was written on empty staves of the music copy. While it is possible that his single-stave Allegro is a section from a violin part to some concerted piece, it appears more likely that this is his experiment (unique, as far as is known) in composing a piece for violin alone: more modest, certainly, than J.S. Bach’s magisterial contributions to the

Notes on the music genre, but interesting as a creative gesture within the given limitations. The Fantasia in A Major hwv 406, with no title or notice of instrumentation on the autograph, is another musical ‘orphan’ for which context and function are uncertain, but in this case the origin is later, from the period of the D major sonata, c.1749. In some respects this appears to be a sketch, but the music can be completed, and in a novel way it rounds off the story of ‘Handel the Violinist’.

1 Johann Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehren-

Pforte (1740), pp. 93–4; translation from George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, ed. Burrows, Coffey, Greenacombe and Hicks, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2013), p. 38.

2 [John Mainwaring,] Memoirs of the life of the

late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760), p. 56.

3 Ibid., p. 59.

© 2024 Donald Burrows Donald Burrows is an Emeritus Professor of Music at the Open University. His first musical experiences were as a violinist, and in his university career he has specialised in the music of Handel, with books, articles and music editions.

Recorded on 13-15 March 2023 in St Martin’s Church, East Woodhay Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Harpsichord tuning: Steven Devine

Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover image: Charles Dessalines D’Orbigny (1806–1876), Crimson Crawfish (Palemon ornatum); digitally enhanced and supplied by rawpixel.com.

Session photography: foxbrush.co.uk Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

The 1756 Kirckman harpsichord

Biographies

This fine example of the English harpsichord maker’s craft was made in 1756 by Jacob Kirckman of London. It is a two-manual instrument veneered in burr walnut with fine inlaid holly marquetry around the inside of the keywell and around the soundboard. The disposition of the harpsichord is typical for the time: the upper keyboard features an eight-foot register, which can also be accessed from the lower (with jacks cut in the ‘dog-leg’ fashion making them playable from both keyboards, rather than the continental system whereby the upper keyboard slides into the harpsichord to engage the jacks). There is also a close-plucking ‘harp’ stop on the upper keyboard. The lower keyboard has another eight-foot register and the four-foot register sounding at the octave. It is quilled throughout in real quill. The performers are incredibly grateful to Mrs Katrina Burnett of the Finchcocks Charity for the loan of the instrument and to Simon Neal for the delicate job of transporting the harpsichord to the recording venue.

Croatian-born violinist Bojan Čičić has established himself as one of the leading names on the early music scene, as both a soloist and music director.

Performer’s note from Steven Devine: I first came across this magnificent harpsichord at the age of twelve on a holiday to Kent from my native Yorkshire. It was then part of the Finchcocks Musical Museum – an enlightened venue of musical marvels founded and run by Richard Burnett and his wife Katrina. In many ways this harpsichord represents one of the most constant musical threads of my life story and I am privileged and delighted to have been able to record these Handel works on it.

In addition to being the leader of the Academy of Ancient Music, he directs ensembles including De Nederlandse Bachvereniging, the Dunedin Consort, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and Phion Orkest van Gelderland en Overijssel. As a soloist he has recently appeared with Kioi Hall Chamber Orchestra Tokyo, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla and the Academy of Ancient Music. His most recent solo recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas (Delphian DCD34300) is already gathering the highest praise from critics.

Bojan formed his own group, the Illyria Consort, to explore rare repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their debut recording, on Delphian, of Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli’s Sonate da camera Nos. 1–6 (DCD34194) achieved great critical acclaim and was chosen as one of Presto Classical’s Recordings of the Year for 2017.

Their most recent release Adriatic Voyage, with The Marian Consort, also won Presto Recording of the Year Award, in 2021. Other recent releases on Delphian include an album of Italian virtuoso violin concertos by Vivaldi, Tartini and Locatelli, Pyrotechnia (DCD34249), which Classical Music Daily called ‘a thrilling musical Discovery’; a first complete recording of Johann Jakob Walther’s Scherzi da violino

(DCD34294, ‘enviously spontaneous and carefree’ – Gramophone); and an album of Christmas instrumental music La Notte (DCD34278; ‘one for every December!’

– BBC Music Magazine).

In 2016 Bojan was appointed Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music.

He is passionate about training the next generation of instrumentalists in historically informed playing styles.

Steven Devine combines a career as a conductor and director of orchestral, choral and opera repertoire with that of a solo harpsichordist and fortepianist. He is Conductor and Artistic Advisor of The English Haydn Festival; Music Director of New Chamber Opera, Oxford and Director of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s ‘Bach the Universe & Everything’ series.

As a keyboard player, he is the Principal Keyboard Player with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and also the principal

keyboard player for The Gonzaga Band, The Mozartists and performs regularly with many other groups around Europe. He has recorded over thirty discs with other artists and ensembles and made many solo recordings. His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations has been described by Gramophone magazine as ‘among the best’, while the complete harpsichord works of Rameau received five-star reviews from BBC Music Magazine. Steven has recently released Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (‘the one of all I’ve heard in the past ten years that I am happiest to live with’ – Early Music Review), and is currently engaged in recording the complete harpsichord works of Johann Ludwig Krebs, Bach’s favourite student.

Steven Devine was educated at Chetham’s School of Music before reading Music at St Peter’s College, Oxford. He was Director of Opera Restor’d from 2002 to 2010 and Kurator and Conductor of the Norwegian Wind Ensemble from 2016 to 2018.

Handel: Overture Transcriptions & Harpsichord Suites John Kitchen

BACH: Partitas & Sonatas BWV 1001–1006 Bojan Čičić violin

DCD34053

DCD34300 (2CDs)

Handel’s overtures had an independent life almost from their inception, and the practice of performing them on keyboard instruments has a similarly long pedigree, beginning with a number of transcriptions made by the composer himself. John Kitchen virtuosically evokes Handel’s orchestral palette in the welter of timbres and colours which he summons forth from the Russell Collection’s 1755 Jacob Kirckman harpsichord, a classic instrument from the apex of the English harpsichord-building tradition. ‘stylishly played … The music is universally glorious’ — Sunday Times, August 2009

PRESTO Editor’s Choice

Hearing guitarist Sean Shibe’s Bach recital, recorded in Delphian’s fifteenthcentury Scottish venue, Baroque violinist Bojan Čičić was inspired during the first lockdown to begin recording Bach’s iconic Partitas and Sonatas. Amid the gloom of the pandemic and restrictions on performances, Čičić travelled north – when allowed – to explore the intense rigours of Bach’s fugues and shining virtuosity of the Partitas’ fast movements. Dedicated to his late violin professor and with a booklet essay written by Mahan Esfahani, for Bojan Čičić the making of this recording in the snowbound Scottish countryside has been his greatest career highlight – a journey for him from darkness into light. ‘music that engages both heart and head, and leaves us humbled, disarmed, and uplifted’ — The Times, CLASSICAL ALBUM OF THE WEEK, July 2023, FIVE STARS

Johann Jakob Walther: Scherzi da violino Bojan Čičić violin, The Illyria Consort DCD34294 (2CDs)

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2014 – Finalist PRESTO Editor’s Choice

Johann Jakob Walther was one of the most significant violinists in Germany in the generation before J.S. Bach, and Bojan Čičić believes his music should be essential listening for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Bach’s polyphonic writing for the instrument. Having built their reputation with a series of Delphian recordings focussing on ‘missing link’ composers, Čičić and his Illyria Consort are passionate about bringing Walther’s collection of Scherzi da violino to the wider audience it deserves. This first complete recording displays the sheer ambition of Walther’s opus, with highlights including his demonstration of the violin’s polyphonic potential in the D major sonata (No. III); the joyful playfulness of the end of No. IV; the inventiveness of the Imitatione del cuccu; and – Bojan Čičić’s personal favourite – the dramatic melancholy of the final Aria in E minor. ‘excellent music from a “missing link” composer before Bach, and fabulous playing’ — BBC Radio 3 Record Review, September 2022

Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli (1694–1773): Sonate da Camera Nos 1–6 Bojan Čičić violin, The Illyria Consort

Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli: Sonate da Camera Nos 7–12 Bojan Čičić violin, The Illyria Consort

DCD34194

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2017 – Winner

In certain respects, Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli does not fit the eighteenthcentury mould. For a neo-Corellian, he is unusually fond of complexity, both technical and compositional, and also unusually open to other contemporary influences, such as those of Handel and Vivaldi. But the quality of his music speaks for itself – virtuosic and joyously melodic, these six ‘chamber sonatas’ had a huge impact on release. Carbonelli’s difficulty has ensured that his work is seldom played, but early-music rising star Bojan Čičić makes sure we have no sense of that as he and his Illyria Consort colleagues champion these groundbreaking compositions with exuberant confidence. ‘superb and passionate … Čičić’s sound – sweet, slightly dry and exquisitely centred – is ideal for the taut beauty of Carbonelli’s solo lines’ — BBC Music Magazine, September 2017, CHAMBER CHOICE

DCD34214

PRESTO Editor’s Choice

With their debut recording on Delphian, Bojan Čičić and his Illyria Consort propelled the name of Carbonelli from obscurity into the classical charts, recapturing the excitement which the violinist-composer stirred up in eighteenth-century London. Now they bring to Carbonelli’s other six surviving sonatas the same intelligence, sensitivity and sheer, exhilarating virtuosic brilliance with which they proved him to be so much more than just a ‘follower of Corelli’ or ‘contemporary of Vivaldi’. For good measure they add in a fine concerto by the latter that bears Carbonelli’s name, demonstrating the respect in which he was held in his native Italy before setting off to find his fame and fortune in England. ‘crisp and buoyant, with the engineering giving a bright, ear-grabbing immediacy to the sound … Čičić is as much a joy as last time for his superlative virtuoso technique and energetic poetry’ — Gramophone, September 2019

La Notte: Concertos & Pastorales for Christmas Night Bojan Čičić violin, The Illyria Consort DCD34278

Bojan Čičić and the Illyria Consort’s latest Delphian recording revels in the great variety of musical styles and traditions that grew up around Christmas and its related feasts in Catholic Europe in the seventeenth century – a time when the introduction of ‘rustic’ effects into instrumental music changed the sound of Christmas forever. The vivid theatricality of Baroque evocations of the shepherds and their milieu and the unusual combinations of instruments in much of this music, here given in performances brimming with energy and the joy of rediscovery, make this a Christmas album to reach for every year.

‘The whole album sparkles; it’s a veritable box of delights’ — Presto Classical, RECORDING OF THE WEEK, November 2022

DCD34304