Italian label Stradivarius is actively recording all 86 known works of Veronese composer Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco and a previous entry consisting of trio sonatas from Dall'Abaco's Opp. 1 & 3 was quite good. This follow-up recording of concertos, Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco: Concerto à più Istrumenti Opera Quinta, taken from Dall'Abaco's Op. 5, though, is really quite outstanding thanks to the performers involved, the Veronese Baroque orchestra Il Tempio Armonico, whose first commercial recording this is. The group has a terrific sense of ensemble dynamics, and the swells of volume in the Allegro of Dall'Abaco's Concerto Op. 5/3 are placed exactly where they should be, flowing right along with the music.

Settecento is the style of art, music and architecture that emerged in Italy in the early 18th century, celebrated here by La Serenissima and Adrian Chandler with a collection of works from that era. The works are grouped by the areas of Italy where each composer worked, including the Kingdom of Naples (Scarlatti, Mancini), Republic of Venice (DallAbaco, Vandini, Tartini & Vivaldi) and the Papal States / Bologna (Brescianello). The ensemble La Serenissima is recognized as the UKs leading exponent of the music of 18th-century Venice and connected composers. Uniquely, the groups entire repertoire is edited from manuscript or contemporary sources.

The programme chosen for this CD by the eminent early music specialist Rinaldo Alessandrini and performed by members of his hand-picked ensemble Concerto Italiano illustrate most of the forms that instrumental music adopted in the course of the seventeenth century. Amongst the composers featured are Giovanni Gabrieli, Frescobaldi, Zanetti, and Torelli, as well as lesser known figures of the period including Giovanni de Macque, Evaristo dall’Abaco, and Giovanni Bononcini.

The main theme of this work of the Ensemble Chiaroscuro follows closely that of the first disc (also produced by Concerto Classics, “Baroque Enchantment”): the proposal is to collect a series of pieces to form a sort of concert program, in order to tell a true story in music, hence the title “Cello Tales”. The listener will in fact be led, through the notes of Antonio Fantinuoli cello, in a journey of rediscovery of the great masters and pioneers of the leading instrument of this recording, unearthed by a careful research of ancient manuscripts done by the same artist.

This disc is a real plucker’s delight featuring not only the skills of three leading mandolinists – Juan Carlos Muñoz, Mari Fe Pavón and Alla Tolkacheva – but also a continuo section consisting of baroque guitar, harpsichord and (anachronistically) Renaissance lute; even the violone and gamba are usually played pizzicato. Together they romp through a programme of concerti and sonatas by Dall’Abaco, Arrigoni, Matteis, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Sigismund Weiss (rather than his more famous brother Sylvius Leopold), Fasch and of course Vivaldi; with a doffof their tricorns in the direction of earlier baroque composers Castello and Uccellini. This is joyous, glorious music-making.

Thibault Noally and Les Accents present a celebration of the Venetian Sonata. The term sonata was first coined at the end of the 16th century by Giovanni Croce and Andrea Gabrieli but it was Tartini, born and active in the Venetian Republic, who created some 200 sonatas for violin, the largest body of work in the form, followed by Vivaldi with 80. If Vivaldi borrowed from all an sundry [Caldara, Corelli, Matteis, Bonporti, Albinoni] then others were quick to borrow from him too and the Venetian sonata spread through competing musicians to Germany, via Pisendel and the Dresden court; France with Leclair and Guignone; and Russia with the Venetians Madonis and Dall'Oglio. Thibault Noally is a recognised name on the international baroque stage. He best-known as the solo violin of Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble with Marc Minkowski, with the Concerto Köln, Pulcinella or the Ensemble Matheus.

Just when you think you have all your Dall'Abacos in a row, they bring along a new one: Joseph-Marie-Clément Dall'Abaco was the son of famed cello virtuoso and composer Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco. His long lifespan witnessed an unimaginable measure of musical developments; born the year Vivaldi published L'estro armonico, the younger Dall'Abaco died the year Beethoven commenced work on his Fifth Symphony. For all that time on earth, Dall'Abaco's extant catalog of works, all for cello, is comparatively slim; about 40 sonatas and this set of 11 caprices, preserved only in a very bad manuscript copy made in the nineteenth century. Although these works defy dating, stylistically, they seem to belong to the late Baroque, probably composed before Joseph-Marie-Clément Dall'Abaco was made a baron by the court at Munich in 1759. Although he appeared there many times, Dall'Abaco was never a member of the court orchestra in Munich, and the honorific may have been bestowed as a retroactive gesture to the memory of his father, whose exalted reputation Dall'Abaco was never able to outgrow while he lived.

Costituita nel 1984, l'Orchestra da Camera "Benedetto Marcello'' ha tenuto numerosi concerti in Italia a all'Estero con riconoscimenti lusinghieri da parte della critica. Interessata al recupero delta musica strumentale italiana del XVIII secolo, soprattutto inedita, ha revisionato ed inciso per I'etichetta Bongiovanni i Concerti per flauto, archi e cembalo di G.B. Sammartini, L. Leo, N. Porpora, G. Sammartini, G.B. Martini, I'Intermezzo "Traccollo" di G.B. Pergolesi e i concerti per pianoforte a orchestra di Dussek; per I'etichetta Mondo Musica ? Emi i Concerti di Quantz, Pergolesi a Piacentino per flauto, archi e cembalo e brani di Monteverdi per soprano, archi e cembalo, collaborando con direttori e solisti di livello internazionale. I CD sono stati recensiti positivamente dalle più importanti riviste di musica. L'Orchestra ha partecipato a diversi Festivals italiani e stranieri anche con prime esecuzioni assolute in tempi moderni e inediti del '700 italiano ed ha curato l'allestimento degli Intermezzi Livietta a Traccollo, Il Maestro di Musica La Serva Padrona di G.B. Pergolesi e dell'opera Il Matrimonio Segreto di D. Cimarosa in occasione del bicentenario della sua prima esecuzione.