Between 1680 and 1728, Marin Marais brought the pièce de viole to the peak of perfection. An ‘unremitting’ teacher, he was also the publisher of his own music and invented special signs to notate certain ornaments for the viol. In the course of his research at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Italian gambist Vittorio Ghielmi studied these manuscript codes, in the hand of Marais himself or his direct students. ‘This led me to a new vision of French Baroque music, which applies not only to the viola da gamba, but also to vocal and orchestral music. These signs reveal the technique of playing in action.

Viola da gamba player Vittorio Ghielmi is the founder of the viol consort Il Suonar Parlante, which plays Purcell's Fantazias of Four Parts, mostly written in 1680. At that time, the viol was on the way to being considered an archaic instrument, having been largely replaced by the fretless members of the violin family. A consort of viols, though, was still the most convenient ensemble for playing contrapuntal music, and Purcell needed an outlet for adventurous self-expression as a break from his duties of writing conventional dance music for King Charles II. The fantasias he wrote are indeed very odd, particularly in their chromatic harmonies, many of which would not reappear with regularity in the Western musical vocabulary until the twentieth century.

Vittorio Ghielmi is known for the intensity and versatility of his musical interpretations and for his new approach to the viola da gamba and the sound of the early music repertoire. His ensemble, Il Suonar Parlante, is devoted to investigating early music repertoire and has also performed with jazz, flamenco and traditional Asian musicians.

"The Passion of Musick" heißt eine Fantasie des schottischen Soldaten und Komponisten Tobias Hume, die der neuesten CD der Blockflötistin und mehrfachen Echo Klassik-Preisträgerin Dorothee Oberlinger ihren Namen gab. Mit ihrem Ensemble 1700, dem Ausnahmegambisten Vittorio Ghielmi und seinem Gambenquartett »Il Suonar Parlante« gewährt Oberlinger Einblicke in die vielfältige »Private musick«, die in den unruhigen Zeiten im England des 17. Jahrhundert in eleganten Salons, aber auch in Pubs und Gasthäusern erblühte. Auf der Suche nach dem vielfältigen und farbenreichen kammermusikalischen Repertoire dieser Zeit folgen die Musiker dabei auch der Fährte, die die traditionelle, keltisch geprägte Musik im barocken Kunststil Englands, Schottlands und Irlands hinterlassen hat und zeichnen ein vielfältiges Bild der Musizierpraxis der Zeit mit Werken von unter anderem Tobias Hume, Henry Purcell, Nicola Matteis, Orlando Gibbons und Matthew Locke.

Vittorio Ghielmi, one of today’s most admired viola da gamba soloists, comes from a family of musicians (his brother founded Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini). In parallel with his erudite and virtuoso readings of Marais or Graun, Vittorio Ghielmi is an artist who enjoys crossing borders. With his ensemble, Il Suonar Parlante, he seeks new musical languages and collaborates with leading figures of jazz (Uri Caine) and the masters of traditional music (Khaled Arman, Dhruba Ghosh).