Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) - Double-Bass Concerto in D, No.6
World Premiere Recording
Performers: Sibelius + Instruments samples (edited by Pau NG)
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Italian double bass player and composer. A singularly talented musician
with a characterful personality and considerable business acumen, he had
an extraordinary career. He was also a passionate collector of
instruments, music, paintings, snuff-boxes and dolls. Dragonetti's
parents, Pietro Dragonetti and Cattarina Calegari, also had a daughter,
Marietta, for whom Domenico provided financial assistance after leaving
Venice. Pietro may have been a musician and also a gondolier. Francesco
Caffi's biography (1846) is the main source for Dragonetti’s Venetian
years. It is said that Dragonetti received instruction from Michele
Berini, a bassist in the theatres and at S Marco. He practised
assiduously, performed to popular acclaim in the streets of Venice,
learnt from friendships with Sciarmadori (a shoemaker) and the violinist
Nicola Mestrino and was a member of the Arte dei Suonatori. At the age
of 24, three years after his first attempt to join the instrumentalists
at S Marco, he was accepted as the fifth of five double bass players on
13 September 1787; by December he had become principal. In 1791 the
procurators rewarded him for his rejection of offers from abroad with a
payment of 310 lire. By autumn 1794, aged 31, Dragonetti could no longer
be retained and on 16 September he left Venice for London with a
two-year leave of absence, which was later extended by a further three
years. Although he returned to Venice in 1799 in order to finalize his
resignation, and visited the city again in 1809, the remainder of his
life was based in London. Dragonetti's career in England was remarkable.
Not only did he irrevocably challenge and alter the reception and
expectations of his instrument but he also carved out for himself a
unique position in music-making in Britain which lasted for more than
half a century. At a time when orchestral musicians commanded meagre
incomes Dragonetti accumulated wealth and security: in June 1846 his
balance at Coutts & Co. stood at £1006 12s. 2d. His popularity and
skill formed a unique commodity which allowed him to negotiate suitable
payment.
In the 1790s he performed his own compositions to widespread
recognition. One critic remarked that Dragonetti ‘by powers almost
magical, invests an instrument, which seems to wage eternal war with
melody, “rough as the storm, and as the thunder loud”, with all the
charms of soft harmonious sounds’ (Bath Chronicle, 14 Nov 1799). Between
1808 and 1814 he was abroad, visiting both Vienna and Venice. After
1815 his income was derived mainly from orchestral work, and his
appearances in chamber music, which included popular transcriptions of
sonatas by Corelli, Handel and Giuseppe Sammartini, as well as original
works by his contemporaries, maintained and consolidated his reputation.
Dragonetti's annual diary featured a fluctuating blend of engagements
during the London season at the King's Theatre, the Ancient Concerts,
the Philharmonic Society and Drury Lane, various subscription series,
and benefit, public and private concerts. During the remaining months he
was a familiar figure at provincial festivals and in the homes of the
aristocracy. His fees were exceptionally high for an instrumentalist:
protracted haggling with the Philharmonic Society led on the one hand to
his absence from the London première of Beethoven's Symphony no.9 in
1825, and on the other to his status as the highest-paid orchestral
player from 1831 to 1842. He died aged 83, basking in the affection of
his many friends. The emotional tribute in The Musical World (9 May
1846) declared: "Dragonetti was not only the greatest performer of his
age on the double bass – possessing the finest instinct of true
excellence in all that concerns his art – but he had moral qualities of a
high order; a benevolent and generous disposition, and an inclination
to friendship, which he exercised with judgment and discrimination in
men and things."
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