Carlo Antonio Campioni (1720-1788)
Six sonates pour clavecin, op. 4B

Le français Charles-Antoine Campion (1720-1788) naquit à Lunéville, où son père était employé à la cour du duc de Lorraine. C’est là qu’il acquit sa formation musicale sous l’égide du grand compositeur Henry Desmarets. A 37 ans, il suivit sa famille à Florence, prit des cours auprès de Tartini et devint maître de chapelle de la cathédrale de Livorno. En 1770, il joua dans un orchestre avec Mozart (âgé de 14 ans). Ses oeuvres furent éditées à Amsterdam, Paris, Londres et aux Etats-Unis. Son Requiem et son Te Deum furent très appréciés des connaisseurs au dire des chroniques. Parmi ses Six Sonates pour clavecin, la troisième s’intitule La Chasse, et la sixième fait appel au violon obligé. Le claveciniste/organiste Simone Stella articule ces sonates avec goût et exprime comme il sied le pittoresque de la Chasse évoquée ci-dessus. Le violoniste Valerio Losito joue la 6ème sonate avec finesse (mais pas toujours avec une justesse absolue). Le dernier mouvement de ce duo, très original par son staccato permanent, s’avère fort plaisant. (Jean-Paul Lécot)

Born as Charles-Antoine Campion in the Lorraine region of France, Carlo Antonio Campioni (1720-1788) made the decisive move to Florence as a 17-year-old violinist, probably studying with Giuseppe Tartini in his famous ‘school of nations’ in Padova. By 1752 he had become an experienced music director as well as composer, appointed as maestro di capella at the cathedral in Livorno. Around a decade later he moved back to France for a temporary stay in Paris but in 1763 he took up the prestigious post of maestro di capella for the Grand Duke of Florence. In this capacity Campioni travelled widely and his own music became known through its publication in Amsterdam, Paris and London. One eager consumer of his music through the London editions was the young amateur violinist (and future US president) Thomas Jefferson, who made a thematic catalogue of the seven collections he then owned, and this catalogue still serves as an aid to sorting out the bewildering confusion of Campioni's printed works. By 1789, when he left Paris, Jefferson owned nearly all of Campioni’s music for strings. Campioni amassed an impressive music library of his own, which attracted the attention of the traveller and writer Charles Burney. Campioni was also an accomplished harpsichordist, as this collection of sonatas amply demonstrates. Full of elegant writing, graceful melodies and graceful ornamentation, the six sonatas fuse Classical-era and Baroque forms: sonata-form movements with dances such as gigues and minuets, and arpeggiated preludes such as one finds in the dance suites of Bach and Couperin. The Sixth Sonata stands apart from the others, being written for violin and harpsichord, with a continuous dialogue between the two instruments rather than simply the string instrument doubling the right hand of the keyboard as one commonly finds in such sonatas of the period. These bold and venturesome works should delight all lovers of Baroque rarities, winningly performed as they are here by Simone Stella.