Gramophone Magazine
Awards Issue 2022
Editor's Choice

Giuliano Carmignola (violin)

An eminent interpreter of Vivaldi, Giuliano Carmignola has always had a great affinity with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, as can be heard in his landmark recordings of the Violin Sonatas with Andrea Marcon (2002), the Violin Concertos with Concerto Köln (2014, Diapason d'or), and the Sonatas & Partitas (2018), which Gramophone judged to be "a first-rate choice among the recordings of these works on period instruments, despite the competition”. Carmignola’s latest project took shape during the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and offers a new and sometimes experimental reading of Bach’s Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso, in which he highlights new details and exalts the choreatic character and the brilliance of many of the suites’ movements. Having already assured the success of Sonar in Ottava (A472) with his long-time friend Mario Brunello, this recording is the first of a series of solo projects that Carmignola will realise for Arcana.

"Carmignola asserts his own special interpretative proclivities: the magical musical intakes of breath during and at the ends of phrases, the endlessly flexible handling of dynamics, and a temporal elasticity that refuses to settle into any form of generic patterning...Carmignola creates the impression of living through each phrase as though it is part of an over-arching choreographic narrative." - BBC Music Magazine, November 2022.