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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