Search - Johann Sebastian Bach, Giuliano Carmignola, Andrea Marcon :: Bach: Sonatas for Violin and Harpischord

Bach Beautifully Played

Dori Sippel | PacNW | 07/05/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Giuliano Carmignola is a musician's musician. He was "discovered" by Sony when he was around the age of 50, having spent many decades in a corner of Italy quietly, calmly doing what he loves to do: playing music, considering music. We know this because we can clearly hear this in his sound. His sound never harangues, but its beauty compels us to listen. (Music, after all,is the art of manipulating sound.) It is not anti-music to play beautifully, although in these times of the vociferous "authentic" movement spokesmen, it might be politically incorrect. Being a working classical musician myself (I'm a violist), I inevitably find it wildly amusing to read protests by the so-called authentic movement. Many sound like they actually believe they are channeling past lives (and aural memory) from the eighteenth century. They conveniently forget that the Baroque Period (1600-1750) was Dionysian (and therefore "Romantic") and not Apollonian. And they very self righteously try to snooker us into believing that they alone know what a body of work stands for, as if any one human being could possibly define that for the rest of us. A body of work stands for nothing, it simply is. Art always is the sum total of the experience we bring to it, "experience" being the operative word here. Ask any old geezer musical icon what is the most important in music, and you will inevitably get the same answer: music is about concentration and it is about intention. From the point of view of rendering a satisfying performance, what is printed on the page is merely the beginning of the process -- and in the end, the least important. For unless an artist takes the printed page and then runs with it according to his own unique and inimitable experience, what is rendered sadly becomes something that a synthesizer also could have produced. I wince thinking of the enormous amount of recorded music out there that falls into this category and of the people who sigh, "I just don't like classical music." I say they just don't like performances that bring nothing to the printed page.Carmignola and Marcon bring their honest selves to the performance of this music. The pleasure of their honesty and the beauty of their sound fills this listener with immense satisfaction."

Carmignola strikes again

jgri | New York, NY, USA | 07/26/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After Carmignola most excellent recording of Vivaldi Concertos I was very interested to listen to the Bach recording, since Bach is in a completely different musical world than Vivaldi, although both are nevertheless from the same style period (i.e. Baroque). Carmignola is reknown for being an excellent Baroque violinst - and indeed he is (so do not listen too much to the one star comment). Being a (after work) violinist my self I simply enjoy listening to him and his counterpart: both are engaged in a dialogue throughout the 6 sonatas, the violin being sometimes in the foreground, sometimes the harpsichord with most astonishing dynamic changes in between those two instruments and within each of the instruments. Playing lots of Vivaldi has done no harm to this Bach interpretation, it may well have put a new aspect into it. The recording is technically also excellent, presenting a very warm, very balanced full sound."

... wort every penny

Dori Sippel | 05/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You have at least three new good versions of this 6 Bach sonatas for violin & harpsichord out (Biondis/Allesandrini on opus 111 and Manze on Harmonia mundi) too choose from but I prefer this disc (even if Manze:s disc are more filled, with other stuff) because I like Carmignolas warm (BUT def. baroque style) and at the same time more daring, spontanious, lively fiddle play and he probably not play by that way because of the sake for it... he IS that good (no mannerism here).This is def. a Bach 6 sonata for violin & harpsichord disc holding its strenghts for a lifetime listening.This harpsichord is by the way also beutiful and skilful played by his counterpart Andrea Marcon who also is a baroque music expert and -in fact- is a professor of this instrument.In those 6 Bach sonatas both instrument (viola and harpsichord) should be heard and treated equal but the viola is in sound a bit "over" Marcons harpsichord -in general (soundengineering?) but I could live with that because of Carmignolas violin.This set is a must have for baroque lovers, music lovers in general and audophiles as well... It is not SO long (some lasting so called fillers should have been in this disc to fill it out) but it is more than well worth the money anyway so buy it with no hesitation. I like to mention that a lot of PROFESSIONAL rewievers rank this disc extremly high in both artistic way and about sound so dont care about one star rewievs about this disc. Stunning, great and shure... there is some other good ones too mentioned above but this is really, really good."