Bononcini / Lotti / Steffani: Duetti Da Camera – Sara Mingardo

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2017)
Like the chamber cantata, the chamber duet played a major role in cultivated private music-making in Italy during the 17th- and early 18th-centuries. Its undoubted father was the polymath Agostino Steffani (1654–1728), singer, composer, bishop and diplomat, whose exquisitely wrought duets exerted an influence scarcely less than that of Corelli’s trio sonatas.

The present CD includes three of Steffani’s duets, along with two each by Giovanni Bononcini and Antonio Lotti. Duets, usually an alternation of aria form and shared recitative, were invariably composed for the high voices especially valued during this period, thus being suitable for women or castrati. This scoring also encouraged the sensual weaving of two high voices, a …