Hyperion Records

Giovanni Bononcini was a cellist who started his career in Bologna, though he was born in Modena. He was evidently something of a prodigy, for in 1685 at the age of fifteen he published three collections of instrumental music, including four sinfonias with trumpets. Although these works are technically and musically advanced – they include some of the most difficult trumpet-writing in the Bologna repertory – they are so different from the works he wrote in London in the 1720s (he was Handel’s chief operatic competitor) that earlier scholars were disinclined to believe that they were the work of the same man. Bononcini’s sinfonia uses the same scoring as the Franceschini sonata, so we felt it appropriate to use the same battery of continuo instruments.

from notes by Peter Holman © 1988