GATTI: Six Sonatas for Viol? & Viola [CD de audio] Paoo Ghidoni, Alfredo Zamarra and Gatti

Gatti lived in both Mantua and Salzburg, where he became friends with the Mozart family. Performed and recorded on the 2 most famous instruments: - Violin: Antonio Stradivari: Vesuvius (Cremona, 1727). - Viola: Antonio and Gerolamo Amati: La Stauffer (Cremona, 1615). The sonatas presented in this recording, labeled as Sonate à Violino e Viola in the autograph score of the Biblioteca Musicale Greggiati in Ostiglia and as Sonate Per Violin solo con accompagnamento di Viola in the parts of the Salzburg Museum, probably date from the beginning of the stay of Gatti in Salzburg. The autograph is written on paper whose watermarks suggest a date of around 1783. If so, it is likely that the works were commissioned by Archbishop Colloredo, for whom a similar cycle of six sonatas was composed in the same year by Michael Haydn , MH 33538, and WA Mozart, K 42324. (Another set of six by Joseph Hafeneder in the Toggenburg Collection in Bolzano, minus the first sonata, may share the same origin.) In this case, the violin part was probably intended for Colloredo himself, a good violin player according to Charles Burney. It was also said that the archbishop enjoyed playing the violin, that he played very well and that he had the habit of mingling with the court musicians and playing the violin with them before dinner. Program notes by Alessandro Lattanzi, the world's leading expert on Luigi Gatti These sonatas have been performed and recorded on two of the most beautiful instruments in the Violin Collection of the Municipality of Cremona: a Stradivari violin from 1727 (the so-called Vesuvius) and a Amati viola from 1615 (La Stauffer).