Help
Skip to main content

Locatelli: Il Labirinto

Ilya Gringolts (violin), Finnish Baroque Orchestra

Awards:

They are performed with apposite aplomb and necessary bravura by Ilya Gringolts who also directs the Finnish Baroque Orchestra...While to my ears the music lacks the invention and poetic allure...

Locatelli: Il Labirinto

Ilya Gringolts (violin), Finnish Baroque Orchestra

Purchase product

SACD

Hybrid Multi-channel

$18.00

In stock: usually despatched within 1 working day

Download

From$10.00

Download

Audio formats guide

96 kHz, 24 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV

$17.50

44.1 kHz, 16 bit, FLAC/ALAC/WAV

$13.00

320 kbps, 320 kbps

$10.00

This release includes a digital booklet

Stream now Hi-RES 96 kHz, 24 bit

Awards:

They are performed with apposite aplomb and necessary bravura by Ilya Gringolts who also directs the Finnish Baroque Orchestra...While to my ears the music lacks the invention and poetic allure...

About

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli’s L'Arte del violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo took both violin technique and the solo concerto as a genre into a whole new realm. The twelve concertos included in the collection also played a part in forming the image of the violin virtuoso, reaching its full bloom with Paganini towards the end of the century. Locatelli probably composed the set between 1723 and 1729, years that he spent mainly on the road performing at princely courts across Italy and Germany. While the unusually high technical demands of the solo part are obvious to the listener from the start, the great surprise comes at the end of the first and third movements of each of the concertos. Here Locatelli inserts Capriccios for the soloist alone of a difficulty previously unheard of, with a left hand technique making use of extensions, octaves, unprepared tenths, double and triple stopping, arpeggios and double trills. The writing also favours playing in extremely high positions: in Capriccio No. 22 (from the third movement of Concerto no. 11) rising broken thirds go as high as 17th position. Ilya Gringolts, whose discography includes the better-known caprices by Paganini, has accepted Locatelli’s challenge, and here performs three of the L’Arte concertos. He does so with the support of the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, which he conducts from his gut-stringed violin by Ferdinando Gagliano, c. 1770.

Contents and tracklist

I. Allegro - Capriccio
Track length7:52
II. Largo
Track length4:18
III. Allegro - Capriccio
Track length7:09
I. Allegro - Capriccio
Track length6:28
II. Largo
Track length4:17
III. Andante - Capriccio
Track length7:29
I. Allegro - Capriccio
Track length7:18
II. Largo - Presto - Adagio
Track length3:20
III. Allegro - Capriccio
Track length13:18

Awards and reviews

  • Gramophone Magazine
    March 2021
    Editor's Choice
  • International Classical Music Awards
    2022
    Nominated - Baroque Instrumental

April 2021

They are performed with apposite aplomb and necessary bravura by Ilya Gringolts who also directs the Finnish Baroque Orchestra...While to my ears the music lacks the invention and poetic allure of Vivaldi’s strongest concertos, the sheer audacity of Locatelli’s demonic solo writing is often compelling listening in itself.

March 2021

The whole thing sounds fabulous. First, there’s the sheer energy and joy radiating out from what is a deliciously luminously stringy sound from the orchestra...Then in comes Gringolts, equally full of stylish, multicoloured élan on his gut-stringed 1770 Gagliano – especially in the outer movements’ solo capriccios.

What our community is saying

View download progress