CD review: Veracini, Sonatas

Francesco Maria Veracini was one of the virtuoso composers who in the early 18th century helped turn the violin into the dazzling solo vehicle it would remain for centuries thereafter, largely through his performances across Europe and only secondarily through his own writing.

If this sleek and energetic recording of Veracini’s twelve sonatas, Op. 2, from 1744, doesn’t quite make a persuasive case for him as a composer, it certainly isn’t for lack of trying.

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine takes the lead role — including in some movements that are entirely unaccompanied — and dispatches the music with a wonderful combination of vigor, tonal strength and rhythmic panache, and she’s well partnered by cellist John Mark Rozendaal and harpsichordist David Schrader.

[...] his cosmopolitan travels through Italy, Germany and England help give the music a certain international flair, with rustic folk tunes and learned counterpoint coexisting side by side. —