Giuseppe Torelli (1658- 1709) spent much of his career working in the orchestra at Bologna’s Basilica of San Petronio, where instrumental music in Italy reached a new golden age during the 17th century. However, for a few years (1696-1701) the illustrious orchestra was temporarily disbanded for financial reasons, and Torelli sought his livelihood north of the Alps. His 12 Concerti musicali, Op 6, here called by Charivari Agréable the “Original Brandenburg Concertos”, were published at Berlin in 1698 and dedicated to Electress Sophie Charlotte of Brandenburg (the sister of the future George I of Britain, and also a patron of Corelli and the philosopher Leibniz). Torelli, an acclaimed cellist and violinist, also found employment at the court of Georg Friedrich II, the Margrave of Brandenburg- Ansbach (neither of these were members of the same branch of the family as Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt, to whom Bach gave the Brandenburg Concertos in 1721).

Charivari Agréable’s accomplished performances prove that Torelli’s music doesn’t deserve to remain neglected. The Oxford-based ensemble has a distinctly international make-up, and expertly conjures the appropriate tautness, melancholic depth, athleticism and amiableness of the mostly short movements. For example, Concerto No 5 has well judged contrasts between slower melancholic moments and oboedriven colourful fast sections. The opening of No 10 is played rapturously by violinists Bojan Cicic and Linda Hannah-Andersson. Editorial woodwind parts, such as a pair of recorders in No 7, bring delightful variety to music that was published for only strings and continuo. Kah-Ming Ng claims that Torelli might have done much the same at Ansbach, and praises that the collection is “the most historically significant concerto publication” before Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (1711) and Corelli’s Op 6 (1714). On the evidence of these emphatic performances, he might be right.