Quartetto Vanvitelli
The Quartetto Vanvitelli, born in 2017, is an Italian Baroque group composed by Gian Andrea Guerra, Nicola Brovelli, Luigi Accardo and Mauro Pinciaroli, musicians with concert activities carried out in the most important festivals of the sector such as Festival Monteverdi, MiTo, Ravenna Festival, Stresa Festiva, Roma Europa Festival, Echi Lontani, Regie Sinfonie, Grandezze e Meraviglie, Anima Mundi, . The Quartet has decided to contribute to the heritage of the baroque music by taking an interest in new music never published, recording two records for the prestigious label Arcana (Outhere Music). The quartet’s work has been enthusiastically received by the main European specialized magazines (Diapason, Musica, Amadeus, BBC Music Magazine, Deutschlandfunk, and many others). The music, the sonatas for violin and basso continuo op.8 and op.9 by Michele Mascitti, represents an idea of the Neapolitan period of the early 18th century in a surprising mix with the French style. The Mascitti sonatas are a happy synthesis of the various stylistic influences, both Italian and transalpine, assimilated by the author in the most diverse environments that have characterized his professional and human life. The melodic gesture that opens the entire collection of opera VIII, accompanied by the bass “passeggiato”, cannot help but remind us that Corelli remained the reference model for the entire compositional work of Mascitti.
In a musical path in which slow and fast movements alternate, dance movements are added or interpolated, but this is not the only pecularity: in fact to the gallant rhythms and cadences, Mascitti however also combines harmonic solutions and movements that evoke characteristics of Neapolitan vocal and instrumental music. Without doubt the role of Mascitti and other Neapolitan musicians, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century conquered the Parisian public, was decisive for the diffusion of Italian music in France and for the development of the French instrumental tradition. Already in 1713 an article on Mercure galant acknowledged its merits, stating, a little emphatically, that “Corelli, Albinoni, Michel [Mascitti] and many others have composed [so- nate] that will remain immortal and that few can equal.”