It was while working in Venice that Carlo Tessarini (1690-1766) discovered his music to have been published in unauthorised editions in London and Amsterdam, capitalising on his popularity and acclaim across Europe, and so began his own career as a publisher. His catalogue of work comprises 280 instrumental compositions, including 85 sonatas for violin and basso continuo. Largely made up of three movements, they are highly distinctive in idiom, full of the brilliance that was to become a feature of the nascent ‘galant’ style in Europe, but with a vein of typically Italian vitality.



The Op.14 sonatas are less virtuosic than Tessarini’s other compositions in the same genre, allowing for performance on the flute. Special care has been taken on the present recording to highlight the greater degree of imitation in the exchange between the solo instrument and the basso continuo as well as the well-constructed variety of the various movements. They are interspersed here with three Preludes or ‘partimenti’ by Fedele Fenaroli (1730-1818), a Neapolitan composer even less familiar to us now than Tessarini.

Cover and playlist inside folder.