Search - Corelli, Wich, Swt Chamber Orchestra :: Concerti Grossi

Great music

FrKurt Messick | Bloomington, IN USA | 10/17/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disc includes a selection of the Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 by Corelli - all twelve of them will not fit on a single disc. The pieces included on this disc include Concerti Grossi op. 6/5, 6/7, 6/11, 6/6, and 6/10.



In listening to Corelli, one may find familiar music without having known his name. Vivaldi considered Corelli one of his chief influences, and J.S. Bach is said to have deferred to Corelli in terms of chamber music.



Arcangelo Corelli (1653 - 1713) was an Italian composer and violist of the Baroque age. The twelve Concerti Grossi are considered his greatest work, and this shows Corelli in the full flower of Baroque music. His work is still very popular, being used in movie scores in many ways, including the most recent major use, as a theme in 'Master and Commander'.



Corelli was not the originator of the concerto grosso style (a precursor of modern forms of music arrangement), he made it popular, and showed many of the great ways in which it could be extended. Corelli is the influence which made possible the concerti grossi of Bach (the Brandenburg Concertos owe a lot to this form), Handel and Vivaldi.



A concerto grosso is built up of different instrument groups developing a common theme. A smaller group and larger group often hand the elements back and forth to each other. Opus 6 is perhaps the one of Corelli's that he worked most diligently on, and continued throughout his life both to work on the pieces, and also not to permit them to be published - in spite of this, they became among the most popular pieces of music in his day.



These are among the lesser known of his concerti. This disc, produced by the Southwest German Radio Orchestra (Baden-Baden) under the direction of Gunter Wish is a very good performance - this is typical of the lesser known central and eastern European orchestras that are not on the world stage, but have performance and production values as high as can be found anywhere.



This is a beautiful recording, hard to find."