00:00 Concerto Grosso n 1 Op 2 in Do minore: Andante - Allegro - Grave, Andante, Prestissimo, Andante - Allegro cantabile
09:17 Concerto Grosso n 2 Op 2 in Do minore: Andante moderato - Presto - Andante - Allegro
18:02 Concerto Grosso n 3 Op 2 in Re minore: Andante - Allegro assai - Andante - Allegro assai
25:56 Concerto Grosso n 4 Op 2 in Re: Andante - Allegro - Andante - Allegro
32:59 Concerto Grosso n 5 Op 2 in Re minore: Adagio - Allegro - Andante - Allegro
40:25 Concerto Grosso n 6 Op 2 in La: Andante - Allegro - Allegro
48:15 Concerto Grosso n 1 Op 3 in Re: Adagio - Allegro - Adagio - Allegro
58:34 Concerto Grosso n 2 Op 3 in Sol minore: Largo e staccato - Allegro - Adagio - Allegro
1:09:35 Concerto Grosso n 3 Op 3 in Mi minore: Adagio e staccato, Allegro - Adagio - Allegro
1:17:51 Concerto Grosso n 4 Op 3 in Re minore: Largo e staccato - Allegro - Largo - Vivace
1:24:17 Concerto Grosso n 5 Op 3 in Si bemolle: Adagio - (Allegro) - Adagio - Allegro
1:32:32 Concerto Grosso n 6 Op 3 in Mi minore: Adagio - Allegro - Allegro

Societá Corelli

Francesco Geminiani is one of those illustrious men whose date of birth is unknown. As with Vivaldi, musicologists confine themselves to giving general dates which do not always agree. The most reliable sources, however, place Geminiani’s birth in Lucca sometime around 1687. As to his life, we are still confronted with a number of obscurities and doubts. While it was easy to follow and reconstruct Vivaldi’s career step by step, centered as it was almost completely around the Seminario della Pietà in Venice or the Viennese Court, it was much less easy for musicologists to arrange the events of Geminiani’s stormy life into any sort of chronological order. Geminiani belonged to the glorious rank of Italian violinist-composers who, at the turn of the 17th century, cultivated at the European courts that fertile soil out of which was shortly to spring the great instrumental tradition of western music.

As to his formal training, all that is known is that it took place in Naples and Rome, under the virtuoso guidance of famous composers such as Arcangelo Corelli and even Alessandro Scarlatti. But the soil in which Geminiani’s art was to enjoy the greatest development and growth was in England, where he first arrived in 1714, not yet thirty. In London, he quickly became famous as a violin virtuoso. His reputation was not earned gradually but, on the contrary, was established practically overnight by a memorable concert at the royal palace, during which he was apparently accompanied at the harpsichord by no less a musician than George Frideric Handel. Geminiani’s intellectual curiosity and zest for life were, however, so keen that he was unable to confine himself to a career as an instrumental virtuoso, no matter how brilliant. Unlike many composers, his contemporaries or not, Geminiani was a man open to experience; famous, for example, was his passion for painting for which he possessed a certain talent and which despite economic difficulties of every sort, led him to become the owner of a rather good collection of paintings. His first compositions were published only some twenty years later. An unusual fact, indeed, at a time when composers of around forty were already old masters with a considerable amount of music to their credit.

The twelve Concerti Grossi, Opp. 2 and 3, may, in fact, be considered Geminiani's earliest efforts as a composer, since those contained in Op. 1 are not original, but intended rather as a tribute to his former teacher, that is to say, transcriptions for larger instrumental groups of the twelve solo violin sonatas by Arcangelo Corelli. Which fact helps, as shall be seen later, to explain several of the overall stylistic features of these two collections of concerti grossi.

After the publication of Op. 3, Geminiani emigrated to Ireland and settled down to live in Dublin, though he was frequently called away on numerous concert tours. As to his success as a virtuoso of the violin, a great deal of direct and reliable evidence has come down to us, including a letter by Mrs. Delaney, a friend of Handel, which describes the dazzling success of one of the virtuoso artist’s musical evenings. The letter is dated 1760, which means that even at that age, the violinist was apparently still able to captivate the public with the wonders of his technique. But the most important evidence is afforded by Tartini, who held Geminiani in the highest esteem and who nick-named him «the wild violinist».

Geminiani died in Dublin in 1762. His contribution to the development of violin technique was left not only in his music but also in the numerous theoretical works he wrote and compiled during his long lifetime. He wrote various treatises in English, among them, «Rules for playing in true taste», «The art of playing violin» and «The art of accompaniment ».