The Sammartini referred to on the cover of this album is not Giovanni Battista Sammartini, but his older, more conservative, and lesser-known brother, Giuseppe Sammartini. He was among the Italians who left to seek fame and fortune in London, and he was relatively successful: he was a virtuoso oboist who wrote music not only for that instrument but for the flute and recorder. These two were both popular in England during the second quarter of the 18th century, and some of these pieces might have been played on either instrument. The opening Concerto in F major for soprano recorder and strings, however, is indubitably a recorder work, with a blistering finale that forces the instrument to careen around sharp corners without ever quite losing control. The other pieces are sonatas for recorder and continuo, with a cello sonata by Giuseppe and a solo harpsichord sonata by Giovanni thrown in for variety. The pieces by the elder brother lie precisely between Baroque and Classical, with both the slow-fast-slow-fast and fast-slow-fast movement patterns represented, the latter even with a minuet finale in the Sonata in A minor for cello and continuo (track 18). Recorder player
Stefano Bagliano is exceeded by some of his contemporaries in precision of intonation but by hardly anybody in sheer crispness in difficult passages; check out the concerto or, on a smaller scale, the quirky ornaments at the beginning of the finale of the Sonata No. 11 in F major for recorder and continuo (track 7). The low-budget Brilliant label does the music no favors by recording it in a Genoese church; it was meant for British drawing-rooms, and the results are harsh. But this is on balance a useful exploration of a still largely unexplored repertory.