A most colourful personality, Veracini won international fame for his music, his violin playing, and his adventurous behaviour. The celebrated Baroque-specialist conductor Reinhardt Goebel writes, “A haughty Florentine, he called his two Stainer violins ‘Peter’ and ‘Paul,’ and his virtuosity on the instrument caused the young Giuseppe Tartini to despair and close himself away in a room to practice. Once, out of despair – according to some reports in a state of mental derangement – he jumped out of a second-storey window and from then on walked with a limp. 

“He dubbed his guide to composition The Triumph of Practical Music-Making, did not hesitate to ‘improve’ Arcangelo Corelli’s Op. 5 violin sonatas and left them to posterity in the form of ‘dissertations.’ In short, Veracini was a man who attracted attention even in an 18th-century world unconcerned with conformity, and whose (mis)deeds were considered worth reading and writing about, time and again.”

He moved to the imperial court at Dresden, Germany in 1716, after being hired by Prince Elector Friedrich August. It was in that year that he composed the set of robust and imaginative overtures (suites) for orchestra that will be sampled at this concert.

Program note by Don Anderson © 2022