Known mostly as an operatic contemporary of Mozart, Giovanni Paisiello had a long life and generally managed to prosper through the upheavals of the eighteenth century's last decade. He wrote eight keyboard concertos clearly marked by operatic style. Part of his early career was spent in the service of Catherine the Great in Russia, and the first of the three concertos recorded here was composed in the early 1780s and dedicated to one of the Empress' notorious ladies-in-waiting. Annotator Keith Anderson seems confident that ...
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Known mostly as an operatic contemporary of Mozart, Giovanni Paisiello had a long life and generally managed to prosper through the upheavals of the eighteenth century's last decade. He wrote eight keyboard concertos clearly marked by operatic style. Part of his early career was spent in the service of Catherine the Great in Russia, and the first of the three concertos recorded here was composed in the early 1780s and dedicated to one of the Empress' notorious ladies-in-waiting. Annotator Keith Anderson seems confident that it was written with a harpsichord in mind, but cites no basis for the opinion; it certainly seems possible that Catherine would have imported examples of a new instrument that had been in existence for several decades in Italy. At any rate, the modern piano employed on this recording would not have been authentic for any of the three concertos here. The expansive Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major is the most interesting of the three, with extremely Mozartian outer movements. The...
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