An album of virtuoso recorder music may not be a contender for the top of the classical charts, but if you want to own just one, consider this collection of six sonatas by one of Corelli's several followers who left Italy to seek fame and fortune in the burgeoning city of London in the early eighteenth century. Francesco Barsanti was an oboist, but on the evidence of the music on this disc he must have been a formidable recorder player as well. The best thing about his music is that he doesn't hit the listener over the head with technical displays, although they're certainly there; his music is well put together, with a typically Italianate drive, and the really fancy fingerwork is reserved for the slow movements. Each sonata is in four or five movements, mostly of the rounded-form church-sonata type rather than in dance rhythms. Sample track 10 from the Sonata in G minor, Op. 1/3, for an idea of how Barsanti uses sudden, rather percussive ornaments to add zest to a motoric fast movement, and the following Largo, track 11, for an example of a really glittering slow movement. One fault with the brief notes is that they do not inform us how much of the ornamentation used was written out by the composer -- most of it, presumably -- and how much, if any, was supplied by the soloist. In any event, recorder player
Barnaby Ralph delivers splendid performances, never losing sight of the singing melodic line as he executes the most intricate ornaments, and never subjecting the listener to the exquisite torture of poor recorder intonation. Harpsichordist Huguette Brassine, one of two members of the continuo accompanimental group, supports
Ralph with sensitive changes in register that set off his melodic lines nicely. This is an unusually nice Baroque instrumental disc from Naxos that anyone planning a recorder concert should get to know; it will also interest anyone who likes Corelli or Vivaldi and wants a change of pace with an unusual instrument.