Sammartini

“I would like,” said I, tying a knot at my ankle, “to play violin in an orchestra. Symphonies of Arne and Sammartini.”

One of the most successful was Giovanni Battista Sammartini, highly respected by the Mozart family.

Europa Galante, led by the dynamic violinist Fabio Biondi, offered Sammartini’s four-movement Sinfonia in G, the bristling tremolo figures unfolding with intensity.

Monza was one of Sammartini’s best students.

Period-instrument purists might find the performing style of Heinz Holliger's playing with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Bach and Telemann and with I Musici in Marcello, Sammartini and Albinoni, rather old-fashioned, but Holliger is so technically impeccable and musically intelligent that such niceties fade into insignificance.