Minuet from Sinfonia n. 2 in G minor by Giovanni Bononcini played by Stephanie Hunt, Baroque cello

In February 2023, Early Music Missouri presented a concert by Baroque cellist Stephanie Hunt that featured 17th- and 18th-century works for solo cello. Jeffrey Noonan accompanied on theorbo. The program included works by Benedetto Marcello and early cello virtuosi Vandini and Dall'Abaco as well as two sinfonia by Giovanni Bononcini.
Through most of the 17th century, bowed bass instruments were quite large, somewhat ungainly and not particularly well-suited to playing intricate solo music in part because of the very large gut strings needed for the lowest notes. Late in the century, however, string-makers embarked on a round of experiments with metal wire wrapped around gut strings. These new low-pitched strings not only sounded good but were neither extremely long nor extremely fat. As these strings came into wider use, luthiers chopped and rebuilt large bowed bass instruments to a more compact size, creating a more nimble bowed bass instrument, ideal for solo playing. In fact the name “violoncello” reflects this bipolar history, since it uses two Italian suffixes-one connoting “big” and one indicating “small.” So the "cello" as we know it is a “small-big” or a “big-small” instrument.
This video is an excerpt from Giovanni Bononcini's Sinfonia n. 2 in G minor. Giovanni Bononcini (1670 - 1747) became one of the first internationally renowned virtuosi on this newly configured cello. Born in Modena, the eldest son of violinist and composer Giovanni Maria Bononcini, Giovanni studied initially with his father. Orphaned at age eight, he and his younger brother, Antonio Maria, trained as cellists and performed together in Bologna, Rome and Vienna before parting ways professionally in 1713. In Rome, Giovanni’s 1696 opera, Il tronfo di Camilla, became a huge hit, with performances across Italy and in London. His cantatas were prized in Paris, his new dramatic works hailed in Vienna and Berlin and he was renowned as a cellist of the first rank across the continent, performing with Pasquini and Corelli in Rome. A truly cosmopolitan figure, Bononcini had a long and peripatetic career. After Rome, he spent a decade in London where his operas were considered rivals of Handel’s. Bononcini’s later career took him to Paris, Madrid and Lisbon before he finally returned to Vienna for the last decade of his life. Despite his renown as a cellist, little of Bononcini’s solo music for the instrument survives. His sinfonias have only recently come to the attention of scholars and players.
These works survive in a manuscript copied in Naples and the editor of the modern edition of these pieces has suggested that Bononcini composed them in the late 1690s when Il tronfo di Camilla was first performed in that city. Each sinfonia follows a Corellian alternation of slow-fast-slow-fast movements and ends with a very brief minuet. These pieces point up why Bononcini enjoyed such success and popularity across the continent. Fast movements feature virtuosic passage work while the slower offer achingly beautiful melodies and evocative harmonies, a balance of technical challenges, delicate lyricism and moving expressivity. Bononcini’s music offers an early glimpse of the developing galant style that bridged the baroque and early classical era. His contemporary, the Englishman John Hawkins, described Bononcini’s compositional style as “the richest and sweetest that we know of” and these sinfonia confirm Hawkins’ estimation.
A regular on EMMo’s concert series since its inception, Stephanie Hunt (Baroque cello) is an active and versatile musician who performs across the region on both modern and Baroque cellos. Her current activities include regular performances with Chamber Project St. Louis and the Persied String Quartet. Stephanie has participated in numerous international music festivals, including the Nederlandse Orkest-en Ensemble-Academie (Netherlands), Royaumont Formations Professionnelles (France), the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (England), and two summers as a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. Her studies on modern cello led to a B.Mus. summa cum laude from the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and a M.Mus. from Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Following her American studies, Stephanie moved to Europe, earning both a B.Mus. Honours and M.Mus. in Baroque cello from the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. Her teachers include Viola de Hoog, Norman Fischer, Hans Jørgen Jensen, Ross Harbaugh, and Monique Bartels. Following five years of study and performing in the Netherlands, Stephanie returned to the United States, settling in the St. Louis area. In addition to her performing, she serves on the full-time faculty of the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville Suzuki program, teaches at Lindenwood University and maintains a private studio in St. Louis.