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Fanfare Magazine: 43:1 (09-10/2019) 
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RAM1801


Platti: Sonate à Trè: Trio Sonatas Product Image

Code-barres / Barcode : 4250128518017

 
Reviewer: Raymond Tuttle
 

Discs of Platti’s trio sonatas are few and far between. We have reviewed only a couple over the past two decades, and of those, only one has been devoted entirely to this composer’s trio sonatas. In Fanfare 32:4, Ron Salemi wrote, “The music is often quite engaging. Having listened to this recording [a CPO disc featuring Epoca Barocca] several times over the past couple of weeks, I continue to find the music worth repeated hearing.” I concur. Neither Salemi’s headnote nor CPO’s inlay card detail which trio sonatas appear on that disc, so unfortunately I cannot tell you with any certainty how many works are duplicated here.

Little is known about Giovanni Benedetto Platti. He was born circa 1697 in Padua, and died in Würzburg in 1763. How did he end up there? Starting in 1722, he was employed by Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, the prince-bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg. Platti’s instrument was the oboe, but he also played the violin and the harpsichord, and he sang. The present works, apparently composed after 1722, are taken from the Schönborn-Wiesentheid Collection encompassing hundreds of pieces, in published scores and manuscripts, by composers (most of them Italian) including Albinoni and Vivaldi, and of course also by lesser-known composers such as Platti. Sixty works by Platti are included in this collection. However, it appears that many of the composer’s larger-scale works, including sacred oratorios, have not come down to us.

All but one of these works are in four movements, arranged in slow-fast-slow-fast order. The slow movements are soulful and songful. At this very moment I am enjoying a sweetly dolorous duet between the violin and the bassoon in the Largho [sic] movement of WD 687. (That designation appears frequently, as does Gigha.) If Platti sang this sweetly I can see why he was a court favorite. The Largho in WD 677 is melancholy, but not frankly depressing. In his trio sonatas—in the slow movements, anyway—it appears that Platti preferred for the two solo instruments to play together in harmony, rather than having them engage in dialogues. This makes his textures particularly rich. The fast movements abound with excitement and energy—was Platti a bit of a hothead?

I have nothing but praise for these spicy and emotionally rich performances by Radio Antiqua, a group founded in The Hague in 2012. They play with personality, and revel in the variety of moods that Platti has put into these works. The engineering, as well, is excellent. Discs of music by minor Baroque and Classical composers are released every day, it seems, but this one should not be overlooked.



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