BERNARDO PASQUINI: 14 Sonatas for Two Organs (Nos. 1 – 14) – Luca Scandali, organ/ Hadrien Jourdan, organ & harpsichord – Brilliant Classics 94347, 72:10 (Distr. by Naxos) ****:
Interesting that Brilliant, with their huge library of budget classics, just needs five simple digits to identify their CDs, whereas some of the labels have record numbers that go on forever, with hyphens, spaces and many digits. Pasquini had a considerable reputation in 17th-century Rome. Today he is seen as one of the most important Italian composers for keyboard in the period between Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti. He was an organist, director of music, teacher and composer, and was particularly attracted to the music of Palestrina and Frescobaldi. There sonatas were not created specifically for two organs, but for two basso continuo instruments, so that they could be performed in many different ways. Their design bears the sort of dialog that would be carried out between a teacher and student. One of the organs usually seems to have the more complex teacher part. The movements use the fashionable styles of the time’s keyboards music, Adagios, Fugues, Gavottes, etc.
Two historic 18th-century organs are used in the recordings, one dating from 1757 and the other from 1785. On a few of the movements of the sonatas a harpsichord is employed instead of the second organ. It is a copy of a 1789 Italian harpsichord, made last year by Fratini & Pallotti. I thought this would be interesting to listen to in my car, where two piano CDs often come across in excellent fashion. However, the organ on the right channel seems closer than the one on the left, and the left-hand organ seems more centered. On those movements with harpsichord instead of the second organ, the instrument is also on the right and sounds much closer to the mics than either of the two organs. (I also find that some two-piano CDs don’t have enough separation to give a pleasing left-right effect in stereo in a car.) The recording was made in the Basilica di Santa Maria della Misericordia, in Fermo, Italy. Many Baroque churches and cathedrals had a pair of organs installed in them.
—John Sunier
