Locatelli: Concerti grossi op.1 (Nos 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10)

"Not only does it reveal music of real genius and adventurousness, but playing of the very highest order."
(International Record Review Sept 2006)

Like Vivaldi, Pietro Antonio Locatelli was both an outstanding instrumentalist and an erudite composer. He dazzled the whole of Europe with his virtuoso skills from 1723 onwards. To be sure, his Concerti grossi owe a great deal to the model of Corelli - except that, in many respects, the disciple consistently outstrips the master. High positions, virtuoso arpeggios, triple stopping, complex trills, wide intervallic leaps at rapid tempo: only Nicolò Paganini was to risk passages of comparable difficulty, but a century later!