 Roberto Valentini naquit à Londres en 1671 et émigra en Italie autour de son vingt-et unième anniversaire pour parfaire son éducation musicale. Compositeur multi-instrumentiste (violoniste, violoncelliste, hautboïste, flûtiste, claviériste), il eut l’occasion, lors des festivals annuels de l’Académie de San Luca, d’interpréter des œuvres de Corelli, Bononcini, Caldara et même de Haendel. Valentino, son nom romain, publia ses premières compositions pour flûte (à bec : recorder) à partir de 1708, puis, régulièrement, de 1710 à 1730, dans un style apparenté à celui de Vivaldi et de Corelli, s’infléchissant progressivement vers un style plus galant. Les dix-neuf pièces enregistrées ici, précédées d’une noble Ciaccona pour deux flûtes, entremêlent significativement les douze classiques Sonates de l’op. 5 (1715) et les six autres plus innovantes du recueil La Villegiatura (1721). C’est avec un plaisir non dissimulé que Romeo Ciuffa et Carolina Pace, flûtistes, sont accompagnés et soutenus ici par la viole de gambe d’Irene Maria Caraba, le théorbe et la guitare de Michele Carreca, et le clavecin ou l’orgue ad libitum de Marco Vitale, constituant le remarquable ensemble de la Cappella Musicale Enrico Stuart, en hommage lointain au Duc d’York, frère de Bonnie Prince Charlie, ayant choisi Rome pour exil après avoir tenté par trois fois sans succès de reprendre le trône d’Angleterre. En 2022, par une humble revanche de l’histoire, cette découverte d’un compositeur méconnu s’avère être un plein succès. (Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gerand) Roberto Valentini (1671–1747) was born in Leicester and most likely remained in England until his 21st birthday, when he emigrated to Italy, settling in Rome. A multi-instrumentalist, Valentini began his career in the papal city as a violinist, cellist and oboist, but is best known as a composer for the recorder, an instrument at which he excelled as a performer. After an initial and almost total adherence to the Corellian style, he gradually began to embrace the sonata collections being published in northern Europe and the stylistic features of a nascent galant style. His extant musical output consists solely of instrumental music, primarily dedicated to the recorder. Vaentini was also active as a recorder pedagogue, and he capitalised on the popularity the instrument was enjoying in his day among amateur musicians. As an expatriate who maintained close contact with his homeland, he may have even imported and marketed English recorders in his adopted country. There were two great makers active in London at the time – Peter Bressan and Thomas Stanesby – so copies of their instruments were selected for use on this recording. The 12 Recorder Sonatas Op.5 were published in London between 1715 and 1720, in a style perfectly idiomatic for the recorder and aimed at the vast public of amateurs, taking Italian sonatas for violin and bass, particularly Corelli’s Opus 5, as a model. The first three of Valentini’s sonatas exhibit the solemn “Sonata da Chiesa” style, with the later sonatas containing more graceful, dance-like movements typical of the French-derived “Pie`ces de Caracte`re”. The 6 Sonatas for 2 Flutes “La Villeggiatura” appear among the five handwritten volumes of recorder music dating to the first half of the 18th century housed in the Sezione Musicale of the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma. The sonatas possess traits indicating a likely publication date of 1730, and the collection was popular, thanks to Valentini’s skill at combining brilliant, pleasant writing with relative ease of performance in fast tempos – satisfying for both performers and audience – and delightful, expressive melody with many written-out suggestions for diminution of cadences in the slow sections.
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