A composer known solely by the manner of his death usually says little about how he lived. Ignazio Albertini was stabbed to death in Vienna on 22 September 1685, and that single fact has long overshadowed his memory. Who was the man before the knife? An Italian, presumably from Milan, who moved in the circles of Johann Heinrich Schmelzer and once – as a letter from the prince-bishop of Olomouc reveals – committed some misdeed for which influential friends shielded him. A few years later, Albertini appears again in the archives, this time in Kroměříž, where he is hired as a temporary replacement for Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and is dismissed after a few months for "offensive behaviour". We don't know exactly what happened. Yet more was preserved than just that mystery and the dramatic ending: a collection of twelve sonatas for violin and basso continuo, printed only seven years after his death, possibly delayed by the cost of the copper engraving.
The fact that these twelve sonatas now stand as an integral cycle on cd is in itself an event that deserves more attention than the anecdote about his death. There was already a commendable partial recording with Hélène Schmitt and Jörg-Andreas Bötticher, but an integral recording of all twelve sonatas was lacking until now. The Czech-German ensemble Rýnský, trained at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and specializing in the stylus phantasticus from Bohemian, German and Austrian archives, approaches the task thoroughly. This stylus phantasticus – capricious, rhetorically charged and averse to fixed forms – also forms the natural habitat of this music. Violinist Vojtěch Jakl plays on an instrument built after an Amati from 1560 and a Stainer from 1679 – a dual musical origin that strikingly aligns with Albertini's own position between two worlds: the North Italian virtuosity of Marini, Castello and Uccellini on the one hand, and Viennese architecture and contrapuntal solidity on the other.
What strikes one on first listening is how little Albertini adheres to a fixed pattern. No two sonatas seem alike in structure; adagios open and close most movements, but the intermediate architecture follows rather the logic of an orator than that of an architect. Moreover, Albertini writes music in which virtuosity is never an end in itself. The technical challenges always serve the rhetoric: unexpected harmonic turns, sharp contrasts and capricious affective changes keep the listener constantly engaged. No sonata simply follows the pattern of the previous one; each time Albertini strikes an unexpected direction. Precisely because the sonata form is not yet fixed here, this music breathes a freedom that later in the Baroque often gives way to greater formal regularity. Precisely for this reason, this integral recording, good for an hour and a half of music, remains remarkably engaging: despite the extensive cycle, there is scarcely a moment of fatigue or predictability. The ninth sonata, with its passacaglia theme that appears as a canon on the fifth and returns again, is the intellectual centre of gravity of the cycle – Jakl treats the double stops and the contrapuntal layers with a precision that never becomes dry, quite the contrary: the tension between rigour and freedom finds here just the necessary space. The sixth sonata is the counterpart: more lyrical, more songful, with a cantabile that almost makes the violin become a human voice. The concluding twelfth sonata lets Albertini once more unfold all his compositional imagination, as if he consciously concludes his collection with a demonstration of mastery. Jakl's playing stands out for its clear, supple tone and natural rhetorical eloquence, making even the most virtuosic passages remain musically alive.
The accompaniment is at least as interesting as the solo part. Filip Hrubý, Michal Raitmajer and Elias Conrad treat the continuo not as a subordinate accompaniment, but as an equal conversation partner. The continuo breathes, as it were, along with the violin, supports where needed and regularly takes the floor itself, without ever overpowering the soloist. This constant interaction, with organ here, harpsichord there and a theorbo that now withdraws and then becomes prominently present, gives each sonata its own tonal colour within a coherent whole and prevents precisely the danger that threatens such extensive integral recordings: wear through repetition. The recording itself is clear and intimate, with an acoustics that provides sufficient space without drowning details in reverberation: you can almost hear the bow scraping across the string and even the smallest registration changes in the continuo group come through beautifully, while Jakl's violin retains its warmth and brilliance even in the most virtuosic passages.
Is this then the discovery of a neglected genius? Not quite: Albertini remains a composer of a single, posthumously published collection, but in these twelve sonatas he does reveal a remarkably distinctive voice, balancing between Italian rhetoric and German order. Precisely this refusal to remain within a fixed sonata scheme makes this recording worthwhile. Rýnský plays without museum distance, with a historically informed approach that nonetheless leaves room for improvisatory freedom – and that is ultimately the best tribute to a composer about whom we know so little else. In the company of Schmelzer and Biber, Albertini sounds far from being an epigone, but as a composer with a clearly distinctive voice. Precisely for this reason has this release captivated me from beginning to end.
Those who open themselves to this music will discover not a forgotten master who rewrites music history, but a composer whose imaginative power proves far greater than his limited legacy suggests. Albertini's sonatas are intelligent without becoming cerebral, virtuosic without effect-seeking and above all constantly enthralling. Rýnský plays them with such conviction and imagination that this integral recording is not only a musical discovery, but above all an invitation to hear this music again and again.