This Sunday, March 26th – 4:30 PM at the Chapel of the Holy Shroud – Old Nice
PURCELL – TEN SONATAS IN FOUR PARTS
Gilbert Bezzina – Laura Corolla, solo violins
Sylvie Moquet, viola da gamba
Vera Elliott, harpsichord
Sergio Basilico, theorbo
Henry Purcell, a “mixture of virtuosity and strangeness” (Britten), did not remain unaffected by the influences of European lands. In 1683, at 21, he described his first collection of trio sonatas as “a just imitation of the Italian masters, primarily to garner appreciation for the seriousness and gravity of this kind of music among our compatriots, whose spirits ought to be weary of the frivolous lightness of our neighbors.” The second book, composed around 1680, but published in 1697, two years after the composer’s death, contains ten sonatas in four parts of the same vein, including the famous “Golden Sonata.”
