VIOTTI & DOMENICO PUCCINI: PIANO CONCERTOS - EUGENE LIST, AUSTRIAN TONKUNSTLER ORCHESTRA

MHS 709 liner notes

Giovanni Battista Viotti, represented on this record by a piano concerto, was best known in hfs lifetime as a violin virtuoso. In fact, he is considered the father of modern violin playing", and his violin concerti, respected for their technical mastery, still affordbasic training for violinists. Although he was Italian, born in Piedmont, the settingof his musical activity was mainly Paris to which virtuosi (including Mozart) gravitated, from every part of Europe in the eighteenth century, to have their works played in public at the famous Concerts Spirituels founded there in 1725. Be cause of his long sojourn in Paris, Viotti's first names are often transformed into Jean Baptiste. Prior to coming to France, Viotti studied with the violinist Pugnani and toured Germany and Russia with him in 1780. From 1782 to 1792, his home was Paris where he played at the Concerts Spirituels, led the band of the Prince of Soubise, conducted at the Italian Opera in the Tuileries, directed what was known later as the Theatre Feydeau, and served on occasion as the accompanist of Marie Antoinette...DOMENICO PUCCINI, the grandfather of the composer of La Bobeme,was the third of five generations of distinguished composers in the Puccini family, descending in unbroken line from the first Giacomo, maestro di cappella, born in 1712, to the popular opera composer, another Giacomo, who died in 1924. They lived in Lucca for the most part, and through the centuries composed mainly sacred music and operas for its churches and opera house. Domenico Puccini, like the others, composed masses, motets, psalms and hymns for local consumption, and also numerous operas, for which last he received instruction from Paisiello in Naples. The manuscript of the piano concerto, upon which this performance is based is preserved in the Liceo Musicale in Lucca.