BON ENSEMBLE OBERON MORONI POZ AURELI - 6 CHAMBER SONATAS FOR CD

SKU/Barcode: 8007194104646

Venetian composer Anna Bon, illegitimate daughter of a writer and a singer, was raised and taught music at the Ospedale della Piet girls' orphanage, Vivaldi's employer for many years. Born around 1740, she shows up in histories of women in music as one of the few composers in an era that decidedly preferred women at the keyboard rather than poised over a sheet of music paper. Recordings of her work have been rare, and the success of this release by flutist Silvia Moroni seems assured. These flute-and-continuo sonatas were written for the court of Frederick II of Bayreuth in 1756, when Bon was 16. They're not in the least earth-shattering, but they have an attractive compactness. Indeed, their swift, assured harmonic motion is their most compelling feature; Moroni, in her notes, takes them to task for not showing off the flute (which was not Bon's instrument) to better advantage, but actually their sunny simplicity is their most advanced feature. All the sonatas are in three movements, but several patterns other than fast-slow-fast appear; two of the six sonatas end with minuets. Moroni and the Ensemble Oberon make the inspired decision to perform the pieces with a variety of continuo ensembles, imagining that they might have been performed by Frederick and his lutenist wife. The title of the collection is the puzzling "Sei sonate da camera per il flauto traversiere e violoncello o cembalo" (Six Chamber Sonatas for Transverse Flute and Cello or Harpsichord), a notation that appears in other works of the period even though blank cello would seem an odd choice. In any event, the collection of lutes, archlutes, and chittarone considerably enlivens the music and certainly wouldn't have been out of bounds as far as what a transcriber of the time might have considered. Indeed, the three sonatas played with the traditional flute-harpsichord or flute-cello-harpsichord combinations come off as somewhat stiff; Bon's progressive instincts clash with the old continuo structure. The lutes let the music breathe. The only real disincentive for Classical-period aficionados here is the sound; no recording location is specified, but it sounds as though it might have been a subway tunnel.