Attilio Ariosti was an Italian Baroque composer and performer who worked in various European cities, although apparently not Stockholm, which is so attractively pictured on the cover of this BIS-label release from Sweden. The "Stockholm Sonatas" designation for these solo sonatas with continuo comes from the fact that American-Australian-Canadian viola d'amore player Thomas Georgi drew on a Stockholm manuscript in preparing a performing edition of these puzzling works. As he notes in his own booklet essay (in English, ...
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Attilio Ariosti was an Italian Baroque composer and performer who worked in various European cities, although apparently not Stockholm, which is so attractively pictured on the cover of this BIS-label release from Sweden. The "Stockholm Sonatas" designation for these solo sonatas with continuo comes from the fact that American-Australian-Canadian viola d'amore player Thomas Georgi drew on a Stockholm manuscript in preparing a performing edition of these puzzling works. As he notes in his own booklet essay (in English, German, and French), the reason you rarely hear music for the viola d'amore, a small member of the viol family with six or seven strings and several sympathetic strings, is that it's hard to determine exactly what the music was supposed to sound like. This "viol of love," which often had a blindfolded face carved into its head, was a performer's instrument par excellence. Georgi's several recordings of Ariosti's 20-odd sonatas for the instrument differ from each other and are all in the...
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