Arcangelo Corelli’s famous “Christmas Concerto” — given the designation “
Fatto per la notte di Natale
” — is a holiday favorite due to its final movement, a bucolic “Pastorale” that seems to create sonorities of idyllic tranquility.
This album is the premiere recording of Corelli’s masterful instrumental works that features the transcriptions by Corelli’s London publisher, John Walsh, in which the duo violin solos are given to recorders. Two recorder virtuosos, Dan Laurin and Hanneke van Proosdij, deliver the intricate and delicate solos along with ‘cellist Tanya Tomkins and harpsichordist Michael Sponseller. Also included are three concerti that feature Australian violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch and Bay Area violinist Katherine Kyme.
A “must have” for collectors of great works from the Baroque, this remastered recording — available on CD, through streaming services like Spotify, and on iTunes and Apple Music — offers superb sound quality engineered to the higher audio resolution standards of the "Apple Digital Masters" series.
More about the Transcriptions:
It was standard practice in the early eighteenth century for publishers to offer arrangements of popular works, to be played “at home” or by instruments more commonly played by talented amateurs. Keyboard transcriptions of great works are prominent in this genre, as are works re-scored for performances by recorders. In 1725, the London publisher J. Walsh printed an edition of the Corelli opus 6 concertos, which employed recorders of several sizes and pitches to play the solo violin parts in Corelli’s original orchestration. The recorder was a very popular instrument (as it is to this day), and without a doubt these transcriptions were extremely well received. The question of authenticity as reflected by Corelli’s knowledge of the transcriptions, however, has recently been more satisfactorily answered. While the assumption has been made that Walsh was merely cashing in on some popular music, a letter has been found which clearly indicates the business relationship between Corelli and Walsh: Corelli was indeed collecting royalties from Walsh, so any arrangements by the publisher must have been known to the composer, and in fact authorized.
