Bottesini: Music for Violin, Double Bass & String Orchestra

Bottesini is of course well known to many musicians and music lovers, especially double bassists, as the composer and performer held an undisputed position as the "Paganini of the double bass" in the 19th and 20th centuries. This recording is a collection of five important pieces with a virtuoso and concerto-like compositional style in which violin and double bass often take the leading roles in dense, surprising dialogs. It gives fans of 19th century music the opportunity to experience the technical and creative richness of a composer who was extraordinarily artistically bold for his time, and pays due recognition to musicians who, for various reasons, have been historically undervalued by the prevailing musical hierarchy. Bottesini's creative audacity is evident in the way he dared to put the double bass on a par with its noble cousins the violin, viola and cello as a virtuoso solo instrument. Many of his pieces contain solo parts that show dialogs between the extreme registers of the string instruments, from the "demonic" violin with its high notes at the limit of perception to the abyss of the low notes of the double bass. No one before Bottesini had discovered the untapped expressive potential of the latter instrument, as it had always been seen essentially as an amplification for the cello part an octave lower. Instead, he wanted the double bass to "soar". The Andante for strings introduces the double bass as a deep soul, often in harmony with the strings of the orchestra. The piece is imbued with a painful intimacy and refined with a swaying, undulating rhythmic movement. His Fantasia on Bellini's "La Sonnambula" introduces the always cantabile double bass as a voice from the outset, and it is easy to imagine how astonished the audience must have been when they heard the melodic sound of this "back" instrument poignantly reinterpreting Bellini's lyrical opera. In the Gran duo concertante for violin, double bass and orchestra, Bottesini combines lyrical sensitivity and expressiveness. Here the violin conveys the greatest possible tension, often leading the double bass and then giving way to it, which performs with cello-like poetry. The String Quintet in F, reinterpreted by Massimo Belli as an orchestral piece, with the backbone of a great symphony, embedded in a romantic setting full of energy and drama. The Piccola preghiera (as Bottesini intended) reveals a sensibility very similar to the Andante with which this album begins. The style here is even more sober, with strings layered in an all-encompassing sound world, rich in harmonic progressions and peaceful resolutions.