Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824)
- Piano Concerto in g (1794)
Performers: Eugen List (1918-1985, piano); Austrian Tonkuenstler Orchestra;
Zlatko Topolski (conductor)
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Italian violinist and composer. Viotti was probably of humble origins
(according to Fétis his father was a blacksmith), and his talent was
manifest early. In 1766 he was taken to Turin under the protection of
Prince Alfonso dal Pozzo della Cisterna, in whose home he lived and was
educated. He first studied with Antonio Celoniat, but when Pugnani
returned from London in 1770, Viotti became his pupil. Widely travelled
and highly regarded as a performer and composer, Pugnani had been a
pupil of G.B. Somis and was, through him, the heir of Corelli. He was
the only teacher Viotti acknowledged in later life. Viotti entered the
orchestra of the royal chapel at Turin on 27 December 1775. For five
years he occupied the last desk of the first violins. Early in 1780 he
and Pugnani set out on a concert tour, first to Switzerland, then to
Dresden and to Berlin, where Viotti’s first publication, the concerto in
A now known as no.3, was issued in 1781. Concerts in Warsaw preceded an
extended visit to St Petersburg, and late in 1781 they returned to
Berlin. Until this time Viotti had been presented as the ‘pupil of the
celebrated Pugnani’, but he parted with Pugnani in Berlin and proceeded
alone to Paris. After at least one private appearance Viotti made his
début at the Concert Spirituel on 17 March 1782. His success was
instantaneous, and it established him at once in the front rank of all
violinists. After 8 September 1783 he retired abruptly from public
concerts, and in January 1784 he entered the service of Marie Antoinette
at Versailles. In 1788, having secured the patronage of the Count of
Provence, he established a new opera house called the Théâtre de
Monsieur. He proved a vigorous and ambitious administrator. His
excellent company introduced a number of important works, both Italian
and French, including the operas of his friend and associate Cherubini.
By mid-1792 the Revolution had made Viotti’s situation untenable, and in
July he fled to London.
He had completed the most successful and influential period of his life;
probably half of his published works, including 19 violin concertos,
had appeared during the decade in Paris. In London Viotti turned again
to performance and made a thoroughly successful début at Salomon’s
Hanover Square Concert on 7 February 1793. In 1795 he became musical
director of the new Opera Concerts. In the 1794-5 season he served as
acting manager of Italian opera at the King’s Theatre and succeeded
William Cramer as leader and director of the orchestra at the King’s
Theatre in 1797. In February 1798 the British government, suspecting
Viotti of Jacobin activity, ordered him to leave the country. There is
no evidence that the order was justified, and Viotti protested his
innocence in a statement to The Times and in an autobiographical sketch
written a few months later. For a year and a half he lived with English
friends in Schenfeldt, near Hamburg, where he published a set of duos
op.5, conceived ‘some in pain, some in hope’, according to the
dedication. He left Germany in July 1799, and by 1801 (probably earlier)
he had returned to London. He then retired almost entirely from music
and devoted his energies to a wine business which he had entered before
his exile. He continued to play and compose for his friends, and his
works continued to be published in London and Paris, but he made no
effort to re-establish his musical career. The failure of his business
in 1818 left Viotti deeply in debt to his English friends. His former
patron, the Count of Provence, was now Louis XVIII, and on 1 November
1819, having applied for the position, Viotti was appointed director of
the Paris Opéra. But the assassination of the Duke of Berry at the Opéra
less than four months later aroused the antipathy of the public and the
royal patrons. Viotti struggled with the difficulties for more than a
year and in November 1821 he resigned. In 1823 he returned to London to
be with his closest friends, Mr and Mrs William Chinnery. He died in
their home in Portman Square.
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