Duilio Galfetti & Luca Pianca - Italian Sonatas for Mandoline (2015)

There is evidence that the mandolin played quite an important role in the music scene from the renaissance until the early 19th century. That is in strong contrast to our time, where its role is only marginal. The first time the instrument makes its appearance is the late 16th century. It was called mandola; about half a century later its diminutive mandolino turns up. These two terms were used simultaneously until well into the 18th century. The instrument was also known under names such as liutino or liuto soprano. This indicates that the mandolin is derived from the lute.

The mandolin had four to six courses of mostly double gut strings and was plucked with the fingers of the right hand until the late 18th century. In the mid-18th century the Neapolitan mandolin emerged. It had metal strings and was played with a plectrum. This way it could produce a louder sound, and in order to compete with the new instrument the players of the mandola also started to use a plectrum. From the late 17th century the mandolin was frequently used, in cantatas, operas and oratorios, by composers such as Vivaldi, Conti, Gasparini and Hasse. Hasse and Vivaldi composed concertos for the mandolin; Conti, Caldara and Giovanni Battista Sammartini are among the composers of sonatas for mandolin and basso continuo. The latter is represented in the programme which Duilio Galfetti put together.

Sammartini is only one of the two composers who are well known. Francesco Piccone has no entry in New Grove and the liner-notes don't give us any information about him. Carlo Arrigoni was from Florence and educated as a lute and theorbo player; he also played the violin. In the early 1730s he was in London and was associated with the Opera of the Nobility. His oeuvre is small and includes one concerto and three sonatas for the mandolin. The Sonata in e minor is in four movements; the first is called arpeggio. Giovanni Battista Gervasio is also a rather unknown quantity who has no entry in New Grove.
In 1767 he published a treatise on mandolin playing. His Sonata in D is the most virtuosic piece in the programme. The last movement ends with an episode in which Dalfetti uses the technique of strumming, known from guitar playing.

A special case is Domenico Scarlatti. Although often treated as keyboard pieces
eight sonatas are in fact scored for a melody instrument and bc. They are often played on the violin, but there are also other suggestions. Valerio Losito played some of them on the viola d'amore; he even thinks that the Sonata in g minor (K 88) was exclusively written for it. Galfetti has other ideas: "[The] structure of some of the chords (...) excludes the violin - and consequently also the Neapolitan mandolin, which did not yet exist. Also the key of G-minor, (...) perfectly appropriate to the instrument, forces us to opt for the treble lute". The recording of the Sonata K 88 in this disc is enjoyable, but Galfetti is a little too restrained in regard to ornamentation.

Galfetti includes pieces by composers who are hardly known and an unknown work by a rather well-known composer (Sammartini).