6 Sonatas for Mandolin & Basso continuo Cheap For Cheap

Led by the excellent and award-winning mandolinist Anna Torge, the ensemble on this album is dedicated to the small but exquisite legacy of a musician about whom, apart from his name and the key dates of his life, almost nothing is known – Abbate Ranieri Capponi (1680-1744). And even this incredibly modest proof of existence would have disappeared if his brother Ruberto Capponi, after Abbate’s death in Florence, had not printed twelve of his sonate da camera for several instruments and dedicated them to the Archbishop of Cologne Clemens August. And so, in the endless expanse of history, the delicate traces of a man were preserved. He was clearly well versed in the instrumental forms of his time and had mastered the art of intellectual entertainment, as Anna Torge and her colleagues from Continuo enjoyably demonstrate with six of Capponi’s delightful chamber sonatas.