A delightful selection of Italian violin sonatas is brought to life by Augusta McKay Lodge and her fellow performers. The legacy of Arcangelo Corelli as both a player and a composer is fully on show in this album named in recognition of his influence.
The very first note heard casts a kind of spell — an ethereal, suspended tone materializing out of nothing to introduce the plaintive Largo of Giovanni Mossi’s Sonata da camera in E minor. McKay Lodge wastes no time in sowing seeds of the melodic ornamentation that will grace her playing throughout. These seeds burst into full bloom halfway through the movement with some extroverted double-stopped extemporizing; there are striking harmonic tinges here, too, with unexpectedly exotic-sounding harmonic-minor motifs and minor-second clashes.