A trip to Italy

06/03/2017 20:36

The next recital programme (St Edmund's College, on Saturday) is of Renaissance and Baroque music for two harpsichords from Italy; not a period where the leading composers were writing much for solo (or duet) keyboard, so the offerings include mainly unfamiliar names like Piazza, Giussani and Pasquini. Some of the music seems to come from a northern Italian tradition of writing for two organs, and many of these works actually survive from the archives of Einsiedeln monastery in Switzerland, where they also seem to have had such a tradition. The finest piece in the programme is, of course, by Anon...