Dario Castello, Giovanni Battista Fontana: Sonate concertate in stil moderno John Holloway, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Jane Gower

• 1Sonata Settima I (à Due. Sopran E Fagotto)05:18
• 2Sonata Prima II (à Sopran Solo)04:44
• 3Sonata Ottava I (à Due. Sopran E Fagotto)05:00
• 4Sonata Seconda (Violino Solo)06:17
• 5Sonata Nona (Fagotto E Violino)06:01
• 6Sonata Terza (Violino Solo)04:41
• 7Sonata Decima (Fagotto E Violino)06:17
• 8Sonata Quinta (Violino Solo)05:13
• 9Sonata Duodecima (Fagotto E Violino)05:35
• 10Sonata Sesta (Violino Solo)06:12
• 11Sonata Settima II (à Due. Sopran E Fagotto)06:18
• 12Sonata Seconda II (à Sopran Solo)04:53
• 13Sonata Ottava II (à Due. Sopran E Fagotto)04:46
• Total Runtime01:11:15

Info for Dario Castello, Giovanni Battista Fontana: Sonate concertate in stil moderno

John Holloway’s recordings for ECM New Series have included many exhilarating and inspired accounts of baroque small ensemble music, and cast new light on composers including Biber, Schmelzer, Veracini and Leclair. If little is known about the lives of Dario Castello and Giovanni Battista Fontana, subjects of Holloway’s newest disc, surviving works by both men show them to have been remarkable composers for the violin. Two books by Castello of Sonate concertate in one to four parts, in stil moderno with continuo, were printed during the composer’s lifetime. For this album, Holloway has selected a number of sonatas from this collection to couple with analogous works by Fontana, some originally for violin as well as some conceived for other string or wind instruments. Along with solo violin sonatas, he has chosen six of these sonatas for violin and basso continuo which can be regarded as precursors of the later trio sonata or even as early examples of that genre.

In the late 16th century new musical developments were taking place in Northern Italy, particularly Venice, where (as liner writer Peter Holman points out), forward-looking musical institutions increasingly preferred to use the violin combined with wind and continuo instruments rather than the lower members of its own family.

About Dario Castello and Giovanni Battista Fontana, two Italian composers from the turn of the 17th century, musical scholarship hasn’t much to tell us. We know as little about Castello, who was leading an ensemble at St. Mark’s around 1629, as we do about the exact birth and death dates of Fontana, who came from Brescia and probably perished during the 1630 outbreak of plague in Padua. Yet there are a number of surviving works by both men that reveal them to have been remarkable composers for the violin. Two books by Castello of sonate concertate in one to four parts, in stil moderno with continuo, were printed during the composer’s lifetime. In his new recording violinist John Holloway has selected a number of sonatas from this collection to couple with similar works by Fontana, some originally for violin as well as some conceived for other string or wind instruments. Along with solo violin sonatas, Holloway has chosen six of these sonatas for violin and basso continuo that can be regarded as precursors of the later trio sonata or even as early examples of that genre. They also serve as proof that there is still undiscovered territory on the early music map.

In the present recording, made at the St. Gerold monastery in the Austrian Alps, the long-established musical team of Holloway and harpsichord Lars Ulrik Mortensen is joined by Jane Gower playing the dulcian, the renaissance predecessor of the bassoon. The ensemble understanding revealed here by this trio is at once remarkable – in their hands, this is living, pulsing music, dynamic and constantly in movement. “The joys of performing this music are many and various,” Holloway says in his performer’s note, “its mood changes and improvisatory character demand, and reward, a willingness to take risks, to live dangerously, in the moment. It is noticeable how much ornamentation is written into the music, and indeed the juxtaposition of sometimes wildly ornamented passages and simple, plain phrases is surely important for the element of dramatic contrast which is so essential to this music (...) The art lies in the ‘spontaneity’ in the performance of the composers’ ornaments. It’s difficult to put into words the pleasure and enjoyment we have got from this project.” That sense of pleasure is tangible.

'Hats off to John Holloway... His experience shows in remarkably distinctive ways. It isn't merely his command and his deep affinity for both his violin and the music. It is his sound: burnished by time, crystal-clear in the centre but faintly soft-edged; free, never forced... an essay in good taste.' (Gramophone)

John Holloway, violin
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, harpsichord
Jane Gower, dulcian

John Holloway
was 8 years old when he played his first public concert, in 1956. From age 9 till 21 he studied with Yfrah Neaman, initially privately, then at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Here he gained his first experiences as concertmaster (of the Guildhall Orchestra, coached by Paul Beard), and enjoyed 3 years of regular string quartet lessons with William Pleeth. There followed participation in various international competitions, interspersed with projects with the Menuhin Festival Orchestra, including tours to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Thus were established the three strands which dominated his subsequent performing career: chamber music, chamber orchestras, and concertmastering. There followed his first and only (brief) period as a full-time contracted player, as leader of the 2nd violins in the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. With the other principal string players he founded the Silvestri String Quartet.

Through much of the rest of the 1970s John Holloway was concertmaster and orchestra manager of Kent Opera, Music Director Roger Norrington. Here he experienced the joys of performing repertoire ranging from Monteverdi via Handel, Mozart, Verdi and Tchaikovsky to Benjamin Britten, all performed in relatively small theatres, and played by small orchestras as a kind of expanded chamber music. This being very much a part-time activity, he combined it with appearances with all the prominent chamber orchestras in London, with contemporary music and string quartet projects, and, after encountering Sigiswald Kuijken in 1972, baroque violin. In retrospect this last was a serendipitous moment, as the Early Music movement in England was expanding at high speed from its previous territories in Medieval and Renaissance music into the 17th and 18th centuries. With the support of the BBC and of many record companies, ensembles such as the English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music emerged, creating a demand for interested and competent players of baroque (subsequently, classical and 19th century) instruments.

John Holloway became a pioneer of this modern Early Music movement in England. In 1975 he founded the baroque ensemble L’Ecole d’Orphée, with whom he presented three seasons of concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, and went on to make the first complete recording on baroque instruments of Handel’s instrumental chamber music. How his chamber music activities developed can be followed, at least in part, via the discography below. As it shows, he performed and recorded with such distinguished colleagues as Emma Kirkby, Marion Verbruggen and Paul Goodwin, Stanley Ritchie and Andrew Manze, Davitt Moroney, Lars Ulrik Mortensen and John Toll, Jaap ter Linden and David Watkin.

His activities as concertmaster/soloist developed in particular with Andrew Parrott’s Taverner Players whose concertmaster he was 1977-1991, and with Roger Norrington’s London Classical Players 1978-1992. As well as leading groundbreaking performances and recordings by both ensembles of repertoire from the Florentine Intermedii to Brahms 1st Symphony, John Holloway features prominently as soloist on the Taverner Players’ recording of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. He also made one of his two recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Andrew Parrott. Through these and other projects with such prominent directors as Ivor Bolton, Frans Bruggen, William Christie, Simon Halsey, Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Gustav Leonhardt, Rudolf Lutz, Jean-Claude Malgoire and Nicholas McGegan he became one of the most experienced concertmasters in the international Early Music scene. In 2001 he became Musical Director of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, directing from the violin repertoire including Bach Motets and Handel’s Messiah.

Parallel to all this John Holloway developed a growing international experience and reputation as a teacher. He has been Professor of Baroque Violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Guest Professor at the Schola Cantorum in Basel and at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University in Bloomington USA, and has taught masterclasses for violinists and chamber music groups throughout Europe and North America, and as far afield as Colombia, South Korea and New Zealand. 1999-2014 he was Professor of (modern) Violin and Chamber Music at the University of Music in Dresden, Germany. Here he was invited to set up a chamber orchestra program, conducting concerts for the Dresden Music Festival as well as performances of Britten’s “Albert Herring”. 2006-2012 he directed “Violin in Dresden”, an international violin competition alternating annually with masterclasses taught by distinguished guests who also served on the competition jury. For these juries Holloway introduced the then innovative idea of having equal numbers of violinists and such important personalities as radio producers, festival directors, artist managers, culture journalists.

John Holloway is an enthusiastic and experienced speaker about music. He has given conference speeches to the European String Teachers’ Association in Germany (in German) and England, has given countless lecture-recitals, introduced concerts both live and online, and been the lecturer for culture travel groups visiting such events as the Dresden Music Festival. In 2004 he was Regents Lecturer at UC Berkeley, USA. Since retiring from the concert platform and recording studio some 60 years after his first public performances he has continued to teach and conduct, and has been developing a website devoted to the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach.

Booklet for Dario Castello, Giovanni Battista Fontana: Sonate concertate in stil moderno