Giovanni Battista Cirri (1724-1808)
Extraits de "8 Duos pour 2 violoncelles"
Extraits de "12 Sonates de chambre pour violoncelle et basse continue"

Breaking Bass Ensemble

Carlo Montesinos Defes, violoncelle baroque seul
Guillermo Turino, violoncelle baroque
Agustin Orcha Mata, contrebasse
Pablo Marquez Caraballo, clavecin

Né en 1724, à Forli, ville située entre Bologne et Rimini, l'organiste, violoncelliste et compositeur Giovanni Battista Cirri débuta sa carrière musicale à Bologne auprès du Padre Martini. Il se rend ensuite à Paris y rencontre le violoncelliste Duport et fait exécuter une de ses Symphonies puis s'établit à Londres où il fréquente Mozart, Abel et Johann Christian Bach. Après un court séjour à Naples, il revient à Forli pour succéder à son frère Ignazio dans la charge de Maître de Chapelle. On lui connaît des Concertos pour violoncelle et des Sonates pour orgue. Les pages enregistrées ici par le Breaking Bass Ensemble ont été composés à son retour d'Italie et reflètent les influences acquises par le compositeur durant ses différents voyages. Leur style constituant une passerelle entre Martini et Boccherini. Conçues à des fins pédagogiques, les Sonates pour violoncelle et basse continue (ici une contrebasse et un clavecin) recèlent un aspect technique intéressant et suffisamment de variété mélodique pour ne pas lasser. Quant aux Duos, ils évitent toute astringence grâce au dialogue brillamment instauré entre les deux violoncelles. (Jérôme Angouillant)

The debut album from a Spanish string-bass ensemble with a mission to revive lost treasures of chamber music from the Baroque era. This world premiere recording presents four sonatas and four duos by Giovanni Battista Cirri (1724-1808), a cello virtuoso and teacher whose reputation took him across Europe – including to London, where for a time during the 1760s he was employed by members of the Royal Family, and took part in the first concert given in the English capital by the eight-year-old Mozart. By now, however, Cirri’s name has been almost forgotten, save through an edition of dubious scholarship from the 1950s of a viola concerto which is in fact an arrangement of one of his London cello sonatas. His set of six cello concertos Op 14 has been recorded before now, revealing his creative gifts to be not dazzlingly original but always pleasing, and superbly conceived for his own instrument. All cellists of an adventurous disposition will accordingly be drawn to this new collection, which contains work dating from after his return to Italy in 1780, and to his native Emilia-Romagna region. The Breaking Bass ensemble has selected four of the 12 Sonate di camera, and alternated them with four of the Eight Duets for two cellos to make a satisfying contrast of genre and texture within the album. The solo parts of the sonatas bristle with technical challenges as well as attractive melodic writing, and the duos are full of lively exchange between the two instruments, revealing a far more theatrical side to the composer, with the two instruments taking on solo roles and sharing the limelight on equal terms. They were clearly designed for pedagogical use to be performed by teacher and pupil.