The violinist Giovanni Giornovich is a largely obscure figure, made even more obscure by the difficulty of searching for information on his life and work: he was born Ivan Mane Jarnovic, apparently of Croat background, and his name was rendered in Italian, French, and English in a great variety of ways. He may have been born at sea, he grew up in Palermo, and he became one of the first wave of violin virtuosi, gaining fame in France and fleeing to England during the French Revolution and finally to St. Petersburg to work ...
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The violinist Giovanni Giornovich is a largely obscure figure, made even more obscure by the difficulty of searching for information on his life and work: he was born Ivan Mane Jarnovic, apparently of Croat background, and his name was rendered in Italian, French, and English in a great variety of ways. He may have been born at sea, he grew up in Palermo, and he became one of the first wave of violin virtuosi, gaining fame in France and fleeing to England during the French Revolution and finally to St. Petersburg to work for Catherine the Great. In London, where these concertos were written, he was a teacher of George Bridgetower, the black original dedicatee of Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata. Giornovich knew Haydn in London and seems to have absorbed something from him, although it was from the expansive forms of the young Haydn rather than the concise Haydn of the London years. Giornovich stretched out Classical-era forms with Baroque figuration that allowed him to strut his stuff as a violinist, and...
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