Through this exciting recording, the violinist Fabio Biondi pursues his exploration of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire for solo violin. Two years after his complete recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's solo Sonatas and Partitas (V 5467), he lands on entirely unknown territory, the Assaggi by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758). Rarely lasting more than twelve minutes, the Assaggi is thus a fascinating melting-pot of multiple aesthetics in vogue in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Composed for the 1744 celebrations at Drottningholm Palace of the marriage between the Swedish crown prince Adolf Fredrik and Lovisa Ulrika of Prussia, Johan Helmich Roman's Drottningholm Music is a key work in Swedish art music. Consisting of 24 individual movements, it forms an inventory of short pieces suitable for providing the proper musical ambience for the royal celebrations, which took place over four days. As befitted the occasion, the character of the music is buoyant and witty, and when the atmosphere occasionally veers away from the carefree, it is towards a graceful melancholy rather than grief or pain. This also conforms to the spirit of the time, as does the style of the music itself: varied and brimming with ideas, but never weighed down by dry learnedness or disproportionate displays of emotion. Roman had spent formative years in London in the 1710s, and in the 1730s made a long journey throughout Europe, absorbing the new, ‘galant' currents in music. Although by 1744 he was suffering from failing health, he was at his peak as a composer, and in this sparkling and joyful music he demonstrates both his innate talent and the impressions gathered from music by composers such as Sammartini and Leonardo Leo.