The rather startling still life on the cover of this album, showing a skull wearing a hat and holding what appears to be an alto recorder in its mouth, is related to the music on the disc only through the recorder. Far from being deathlike, the music is sprightly and showy. Francesco Maria Veracini was a rough contemporary of
Vivaldi, a Florentine who came on the scene in the 1710s and traveled Europe as a violin virtuoso. The pieces here were composed in 1716 and specified as being "a violino o flauto" -- for violin or flute, which here meant a recorder. In general, Veracini's music went unheard for many decades of the Baroque revival because it doesn't look like much on the page; it requires a player who can apply improvised ornamentation convincingly. And here there is the additional challenge of making violin music sound good on a recorder. Recorder player Karsten Erik Ose, surely the only exponent of his instrument who looks as though he just stepped out of a GQ photo spread, succeeds on both counts. Each of the six sonatas here is in four movements, in some variation of a slow-fast-slow-fast pattern; Ose fills out the slow movements with complex ornaments that never sound ostentatious, and he executes the technical challenges of the fast movements with aplomb. Another appealing feature is that he uses a different recorder for each work, all of them made around 1700. Each has its own personality; some drip with expression, while others have the mechanical precision of an organ. And Ose, playing an instrument generally thought to have limited expressive range, brings out the distinctive character of each individual work, as well. This is state-of-the-art Baroque music, well worth the time of anyone interested in how historical performance can illuminate the Baroque repertoire.