Search - Domenico Cimarosa, Marcella Crudeli :: Domenico Cimarosa: Complete Sonatas

You liked the Sonatas of Scarlatti and Haydn? You're gonna l

Discophage | France | 06/05/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The recent recital of Sonatas of Baldassare Galuppi (1706 -1785) played on the piano by Andrea Bacchetti (see my review of Piano Sonatas) sent me back to this 2-CD set of the complete Sonatas of Cimarosa. The Galuppi disc offered many felicities, but entailed some disappointment as well. This had to do with the formal structure adopted by Galuppi, not yet the three-movement, fast-slow-fast architecture illustrated so brilliantly by Haydn and Mozart, but a two-movement formal design consisting of slow-fast. Added to the fact that Galuppi often extended these slow movements way too long for their basic material (or his ability to develop it imaginatively), the result was that there seemed to be too much "pretty", pensive, wistful meditation and not enough adrenalin. On the other hand I remembered having been bowled over by this Cimarosa recital, when I bought it years ago. Memories confirmed.



Galuppi's dates makes him of a generation later than Bach, Vivaldi, Haendel and Scarlatti, but of an older generation than Haydn and Mozart as well: he was a contemporary of the two eldest Bach sons, Carl-Philipp-Emmanuel and Wilhelm-Friedemann. Domenico Cimarosa (1749-18101) is an almost exact contemporary of Mozart, and shares with him an unfortunately early death (he had just turned 51). What he shares with Galuppi is a renown mostly as a composer of operas (and first and foremost of Il Matrimonio segreto, The Secret Marriage) rather than as one of keyboard music. Of more significance perhaps is that, like Galuppi, he doesn't follow the classical architecture of three movements, fast-slow-fast. In that respect, he is even more passé than Galuppi: his model is the short one-movement Sonata whose towering master was Scarlatti (a few, like Sonata Vitale Vol II/21 or Vitale Vol II/31, CD 1 track 21 and 26, do have, within their single movement, an A-B-A, fast-slow-fast structure, and some, like Vitale Vol II/30, CD 1/24 has a slow-fast design).



The comparison with Scarlatti seems quite appropriate, since Cimarosa's Sonatas have an uplifting verve, a dynamism and a dazzling digital virtuosity, and, in the slow ones, a lilt and grace that are very reminiscent of his forbearer. But stylistically (not surprisingly), the Sonatas sound more like movements from Haydn Sonatas. One additional advantage (over Galuppi at least): each movement is short and never outstays its welcome, on the contrary. They are all little, self-contained gems.



Other than this disc, I had never heard of Marcella Crudeli. She was a student of Alfred Cortot, a teacher at the Academia Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Ecole Normale de Musique and Paris. She has devoted much activity to the rediscovery of the keyboard output of Cimarosa. She has very cleverly assembled her recital, not in any chronological order or even by opus number, but so to compose, as far as possible, larger fast-slow-fast Sonatas (there are too many fast movements in relation to the slow ones to be consistent all over). Her playing sounds great, crisp and full of verve.



If you like the Sonatas of Scarlatti and Haydn, you're gonna love Cimarosa.

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