Geminiani, Avison, Haendel Bononcini, Porpora

8 musicians

Many Italian composers attempted the adventure in London in the 1730s, and the battle raged between composers like Porpora or Bononcini supported by the Royal Academy of Music and part of the nobility as well as the king’s supporters amongst which Handel. Despite the emulation caused by this competition between composers and star singers, between opera houses and political factions, London would eventually naturalize and crown the young George Frideric Handel at the expense of his unfortunate rivals.  

Meanwhile, Francesco Geminiani revolutionized instrumental writing with his interpretation treatise and wrote a mind-blowing follia inspired by Corelli’s, while his student Charles Avison brilliantly revisited and orchestrated Scarlatti’s virtuosissimes sonatas a few years later. As for the brilliant Neapolitan pedagogue Nicola Porpora, he sometimes left the opera to rediscover the vocality of the cello as a connoisseur and entrust it with one of the most beautiful concertos of the Baroque period.