Cellist Elinor Frey has worked for the past many years to research, record, and publish the remarkable cello music of 18th-century virtuoso Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco. Her 2020 CD release “Dall’Abaco: Cello Sonatas” was awarded the prestigious Diapason d’or and her 2022 release “The Cello According to Dall’Abaco” was given a “cum laude” in Luister magazine. Her new album celebrating Dall’Abaco’s music is one that explores the Baroque art of variation through two cello trios, performed alongside Eva Lymenstull and Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde, and three cello sonatas, joined by Michele Pasotti and Federica Bianchi. In each sonata, the final movements have a theme followed by a set of variations. Such variations give space for the composer or the performer to develop the piece further by producing interesting new gestural figures in the solo cello part while continuing to use the same bass line and its harmonies. Sonata ABV 39 has a set variations written by Dall’Abaco and Sonatas ABV 20 and ABV 21 have variations written by Elinor Frey. Variation sets are typically full of virtuosic gestures and resourceful melodic creations. At the same time, the album explores the subtle variations of sound among cellos and cellists themselves.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

By 1750, the cello was an important and fashionable instrument in Paris and throughout France. Cellist-composers contributed dozens of works and the best performers throughout Europe were heard on Parisian stages. However, a newly-developed type of harp, the single-action pedal harp, was about to explode in popularity. Jean Baur, a musician from Bouzonville, France (in the Lorraine region), arrived in Paris in 1745, published two collections of cello sonatas, and then primarily performed on and composed for the harp throughout the 1760s and 70s, including a performance at the Concert Spirituel with his harpist daughter.

This project presents the first recording dedicated to this fascinating and practically unheard composer. In it, we hear his more “serious” cello music alongside Galant salon music for entertainment. Jean Baur’s chamber music captivates with its joyful and imaginative passagework and his vividly expressive melodies.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Son of a famous composer from Verona, Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco learned to play the cello as a young boy growing up in Munich, Germany at about the same time that Bach wrote his famous cello suites. A few years later, in 1729, Dall’Abaco found his first employment as a cellist, in Bonn at the court of the Elector of Cologne, and began a fascinating musical career that led him to prominence in London, Paris, Vienna, and other European musical centres. French grace, German logic, and Italian virtuosity come together in Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco’s fine cello sonatas and cello duos, a world premiere recording of works that offer a remarkable range of technical demands and musical variety.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

In Antonio Vandini: Complete Works, cellist Elinor Frey and Passacaille Records present the six sonatas and one concerto of one of the most noteworthy and fascinating Italian cellist-composers of the 18th century. Antonio Vandini’s works span from 1717 in Venice (just a few years before he taught at the La Pietà school alongside the legendary Vivaldi) to about the 1750s when his last sonatas were written (probably as he toured the world with his musical partner, the famous violinist, Giuseppe Tartini).

Captivated by Vandini’s ability to draw out some of the finest qualities of the cello by expertly blending both lyricism and virtuosity, Frey, cellist-musicologist Marc Vanscheeuwijck, and gambist Patxi Montero together explored Vandini’s particular playing techniques. As shown in drawings, portraits, and eye-witness accounts, Vandini was one of the last remaining cellists to continue to use an underhand bow technique. Harpsichordist Federica Bianchi joined the team for the recording, held at the at the Sala della Carità, a short walk from the St-Antonio Basilica in Padua where Vandini spent most of his musical life.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Passacaille Records and cellist Elinor Frey, with harpsichordist Federica Bianchi, lutenist Giangiacomo Pinard, and cellist Mauro Valli, present the first recording of cello sonatas by Giuseppe Clemente Dall’Abaco (1710-1805).

Dall’Abaco’s sonatas are full of cantabile melodies with the lightness of folksongs, passagework that demands brilliance and facility, and extraordinary slow movements that bring out the natural beauty of the cello’s tone. Dall’Abaco was a celebrated cellist-composer who participated in significant concerts in many of the major musical centres of Europe, among them London, Paris, Vienna, Verona, Munich and Bonn. In these five sonatas, we find individual movements devoted to regional styles and instrumental exoticisms such as La Zampogna (Italian bagpipe), Amodo di Arciliuto, and A modo di Viola da gamba. Frey’s recording includes the original version of the G Major Cello Sonata previously attributed to G.B. Sammartini by way of a borrowed version by Martin Berteau.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

 Booklet: EN, FR

Lyrics: EN, FR, IT

In the works recorded here (many for the first time) in her second Passacaille re-cording Elinor Frey performs with Lorenzo Ghielmi and Marc Vanscheeuwijck. In her choice of Berlin Sonatas she really achieves a great quality of expression, an expression of the kind that helped make Berlin composers famous, especially for their rapturous Adagios and tuneful Allegros, each leaving ample space for the performer’s creativity.

Booklet: EN, FR, DE

Booklet: EN, FR, DE