 Angelo Berardi, d'origine toscane, fut maître de chapelle des cathédrales de Viterbo, Tivoli, Spoleto et à Santa Maria in Trastevere à Rome. Grand théoricien (il publia six traités), compositeur prolifique, surtout de musique sacrée, il peut compter aussi au nombre des brillants précurseurs de Corelli et Vivaldi comme le montre le présent enregistrement. Ce recueil de sonates est dédié à une femme, sans doute violoniste virtuose comme Vivaldi en connaîtra à la Pietà puisque Berardi salue la "douceur, légèreté et souplesse" qu'elle avait montrées dans leur exécution. Chacune des sonates du recueil porte l'appellation de chanson (Canzone) suivie d'un titre évocateur. Plusieurs indications de mouvement renvoient à des danses (courante, ballet, gaillarde, sarabande). La dernière sonate, qualifiée de Caprice (Capriccio per Camera), fait aussi référence à des styles variés (français, anglais, allemand). Le choix d'une basse réduite au clavecin, l'acoustique réverbérée de l'église où ce disque fut enregistré, enfin le son souvent rêche du violon donnent à cette interprétation de style sévère un caractère de sonates d'église. Le clavecin, copie d'un instrument Grimaldi de 1697, est de belle sonorité. (Bruno Fargette) Angelo Berardi (Sant’Agata Feltria, Urbino, 1636 – Rome, 1694) was a pupil of Giovan Vincenzo Sarti and Marco Scacchi, of the Roman school, the latter a fundamental figure in his training. Committed supporter of the Seconda Prattica, Berardi maintained that modern music had reached “greater perfection compared to the past” and that the practice of music was more important than theory; he asserted, moreover, that a good composition should also elevate the soul to virtuous thoughts. His life’s path wound its way through numerous centers (among them Montefiascone, Viterbo, Tivoli and Spoleto) to the crowning of his career as maestro di cappella in Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome in 1692, where he died surrounded by numerous cages with canaries and other birds that he left to his pupil Raffaelle [sic] Raffaelli to inherit (one of the twelve heirs of his few things), together with his self portrait. Berardi was a prolific writer and a very able contrapuntist whose value was, already at that time, extensively recognized, perhaps also because of the careful balance that allowed him to praise the genius of Arcangelo Corelli while maintaining an excellent rapport with the Bolognese Giovanni Paolo Colonna during the years of the famous diatribe between those two. In terms of his stylistic profile, Berardi shows fantasy and richness of inspiration, so much so that his only work assigned to the violin, and dedicated to Sister Anna Maria Francesca Rossi, Augustinian nun from Viterbo (the Sinfonie a Violino Solo, Book I, Op. 7, Bologna, Giacomo Monti 1670), seems to cover the entirety of the instrument’s abilities and expressive variety.
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