Boccherini / Giardini / Butter Quartet - Scintilla - Early Italian String Quartets [CD]

An exciting young Dutch-basedensemble, performing on gut strings,brings flair and historically informedstyle to four little-known examples ofrepertoire from the dawn of thestring quartet.Founded while it's members werestudents of the Royal Conservatoirein The Hague, the Butter Quartetgives vibrant historically-informedperformance focusing on Classical-erarepertoire. Within it's short history,the Quartet has appeared at severalimportant early-music festivals. Atthe 2019 York Early MusicInternational Young ArtistsCompetition, they were awarded aplace in the prestigiousEEEMERGING+ professionaldevelopment scheme for youngEuropean ensembles. With thiscollection of rarely heard 18thcentury quartets from Italy, theButter Quartet makes a thrilling debuton record. The individuality of eachcomposer is accentuated by theirmutual juxtaposition. In their bookletessay for the album, the Quartetmembers recount combing librariesfor early quartets which have beenovershadowed by Haydn's mastery ofthe genre. All of the composersfeatured in Scintilla were famousviolin virtuosi, with the exception ofBoccherini who was a cellist. Theirwork as performers was inseparablefrom the music they composed.Italian galant music and performerswere characterized by gorgeous tone,operatic sensibilities, and elegantornamentation.An E flat major Quartet by Gaetano Pugnani(1731-1798) retains traces of Baroquegrammar to it's phrasing, while a C minorQuartet by Boccherini (1743-1805) is markedby the surges of pathos that belong to thekey signature as reinterpreted by Haydn,Mozart and Beethoven. Maddalena Sirmen(1745-1818) wrote six quartets of which No.5in F major is a remarkably close-woven andreflective work, hardly a display piece in thetradition of her teacher Tartini but touchedthroughout with the spirit of subtleinnovation we associate with Haydn. Finally,the C major Quartet of Felice Giardini (1716-1796) is distinguished by an unusually richviola part which may arise from thecircumstances of it's composition in London,where the composer played his violin withboth the painter Thomas Gainsborough andthe Prince of Wales, who became KingGeorge IV