Sinfonia in D minor, Op. 12 No. 4 ¨La Casa del Diavolo¨
00:00 Andante sostenuto - Allegro assai
06:58 Andantino con molto
11:28 Andante sostenuto - Allegro con moto (Chaconne representing Hell)

Sinfonia in C minor, Op. 41
18:51 Allegro assai
25:28 Pastorale (Lentarello)
30:35 Minuetto
33:33 Finale

I Solisti Veneti - Claudio Scimone, director
Violins: Piero Toso, Ermanno Agostini, Nane Calabrese, Guido Furini,
Vito Prato, Juan Carlos Rybin, Ronald Valpreda
Violas: Henk Hoogland, Sergio Paulon, Ferruccio Sangiorgi
Cellos: Max Cassoli, Gianni Chiampan, Severino Zannerini
Contrabass: Leonardo Colonna
Oboes: Alessandro Bonelli, Pietro Borgonovo
Bassoons: Kjioshi Kojama, Renzo Gambalunga
Horns: Giacomo Grigolato, Giuliano Lapolla
(Revisions: Pina Carmirelli)

Arte: Vista de la erupción del Vesubio (1771), por Antonio Carnicero (1748-1814)

In March 1760 the Boccherini family arrived in Vienna, a city which was neither unknown nor unfriendly to them; three years earlier Leopoldo Boccherini, accompanied by his children, had accepted an offer of engagements in the Austrian capital. Three years later, in 1763, Leopoldo was once more to agree to return there. But that March in 1760, when the family left Lucca for Vienna, the father Leopoldo had high hopes that his four children’s respective talents would manage to reap their rewards. The results were mixed. The younger daughter, Anna-Matilda, just had long enough to show that she was not made for dancing, whilst her elder sister, Maria-Ester, also a dancer, was to dazzle the Viennese public, win the protection of the Empress Marie-Therese and find as a husband the dancer Onorato Vigano, father of the future celebrated dancer and choreographer Salvatore Vigano. Of the two boys, Giovanni-Gastone was the more reticent; he danced a little, without success; he played the violin a little, without success, before discovering that his poetic gifts could lead to a career as an official librettist. It was, in fact, on Luigi, then aged 17, that the musical impact of Vienna was to have the greatest effect. Known already as a cellist, he began his life as a composer in the summer of 1760, with the Six Trios Op. 1. Gluck was one of those who first encouraged him, a patronage which the young man was never to forget; some ten years later, in 1771, when he embarked on his first set of symphonies, Opus 12, Luigi Boccherini did not fail to give homage to the man who had picked him out from the anonymity of youth and artistic insignificance.

In some ways, this Symphony in D Minor, Op. 12, No. 4, dedicated to Gluck, is a curious piece. It is at once a single and a multiple piece, and yet composite because the three movements seem to come from different backgrounds.

After a dramatic Andante sostenuto, a kind of theatrical curtain-raiser, romantic in flavor, comes an Allegro assai which is in fact only the orchestrated version of a movement from a violin sonata written in 1768 when Boccherini was staying in Paris. As is often the case with Boccherini, the thematic elements are copious and diverse. One might almost talk of a setting of various elements in the mold of the allegro of a classical sonata, complete with repeated exposition, development and recapitulation. The unity of this movement with those that follow is due to Boccherini taking the most flamboyant part of Op. 5 for violin and piano, as if first to catch the listener’s attention before presenting him with more descriptive elements. The second movement, Andantino con moto, actually seems to try to blend rhythms suggestive of the dance with the discreet appeal of melodic lyricism. Then the last movement, after a reprise of the dramatic overture, is a candid piece of plagiarism from one of Gluck’s works; this Allegro con moto bears the sub-title “Chaconne representing Hell, in imitation of M. Gluck’s chaconne from Le Festin de pierre.” Gluck’s ballet, Don Juan ou le Festin de pierre, was performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on October 17, 1761; its final scene depicts Don Juan’s descent into Hell. The audience was dazzled by the dramatic splendor of the scene; nothing was missing — chaos, lightning, the flames of hell, wild devils. Boccherini took up the theme of the final chaconne.

Just like Gluck, who was carried away by the descriptive fervor of his imagination, Boccherini in no way respected the chaconne proper, which would have consisted of untiring repetition in one form or another: what he offers us fairly and squarely is an allegro in sonata form. Only orchestral characteristics such as rapid rising or falling scales, or heavy accents thrown suddenly into a pianissimo passage — as in the exposition of the chaconne theme — remind us that the work is supposed to throw up “flames, thunder, and lightning” to depict the devil’s abode.

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