This new recording presents the complete unpublished works for harpsichord and organ, a collection of Toccatas, Canzonas, Correntes, Sonatas and Ricercares. With this release Roberto Loreggian completes his Frescobaldi odyssey.
The son of an organist, he was born in the northern city of Ferrara into a wealthy family. His employer, the Duke Alfonso II d’Este was obsessed with music, and spent several hours a day listening, spending considerable financial resources into music making at court. Young Frescobaldi obviously thrived in this environment for he soon took up employment for the Duke of Mantua, and later became organist to the Medici in Florence from 1628-34. He then went even further by moving to Rome to work for the Barberini family of Pope Urban VIII. In this elite society he mingled with such names as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona. Although Frescobaldi was influenced by numerous earlier composers such as the Neapolitans Ascanio Mayone and Giovanni Maria Trabaci and the Venetian Claudio Merulo, his music represents much more than a summary of its influences. Aside from his masterful treatment of traditional forms, Frescobaldi is important for his numerous innovations, particularly in the field of tempo: unlike his predecessors, he would include in his pieces sections in contrasting tempi, and some of his publications include a lengthy preface detailing tempo-related aspects of performance. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) remained the organist at St. Pietro's in Rome for a good part of his life.
A decade on from the release of this much praised, definitive edition, Loreggian has returned to Frescobaldi and gathered up many much less well-known pieces to be found in manuscript collections across Europe. In some cases these are alternative or earlier versions of published works. One hallmark of the Frescobaldi style is its restlessness, or appetite for change which speaks to our age even more than his own. Even within the established form of a given genre such as a toccata, Frescobaldi bends and stretches the rhetoric, leaps forward in harmony and holds back the phrase with a sophistication worthy of ancient rhetoricians such as Cicero.
It follows naturally that these pieces were created in a method of continual transformation. While following the course of his compositional style invites the listener on a journey of more than academic interest, the appeal of this set resides no less in the sheer fertility of invention on offer. Frescobaldi always encouraged his performers to play with spontaneous freedom, a kind of liberated intensity, which requires complete immersion in the style and the world of this music to pull off successfully.
Roberto Loreggian has taken a no less imaginative approach to his choice of instruments for this substantial projects, especially in the choice of organs. CDs 1 and 4 are recorded on a 1998 Zanin organ built for the Chiesa di S.Caterina, in Treviso; CDs 3 and 6 on a well preserved but spicily mean-toned instrument from 1565 in the Basilica palatina di Santa Barbara at Mantova. These are both large instruments, affording formidable weight as well as the high, bright stops which predominate in the registration of this music.
The set is an essential acquisition for anyone with more than a passing interest in early keyboard music. © Brilliant Classics