With a disc of Giovanni Battista Costanzi’s cello sonatas behind him for Glossa, Giovanni Sollima demonstrates further the melodic inventiveness and harmonic liberties to which Costanzi was given, together with a virtuoso’s capacity to relish the technical demands imposed by a Roman musician who was clearly also a star player on the instrument himself. Together with the Arianna Art Ensemble, Sollima has recorded five sinfonias for cello and continuo, and a sonata for two cellos where he is joined once again by Monika Leskovar. The four-movement structure favoured by Corelli is still apparent in some of these sinfonias but there is evidence of influences coming from Europe although Costanzi did not venture far outside the Eternal City. It is also likely that he taught the young Boccherini, who had made the considerable journey from Lucca for lessons with 'Giovannino del Violoncelo'.

A new composition, The Hunting Sonata, by Sollima himself, takes off from where Costanzi’s almost programmatic
Sonata for two cellos, “ad uso di corni da caccia” left off.

“Master of the Choir at St Peter’s, Rome in the 18th Century, little of Constanzi’s work is recorded. The stylish performances accompanied by excellent programme notes make this a worthwhile recording.” - BBC Music Magazine, October 2016 **** - (GCD923801: Cello Sonatas)

“Constanzi clearly wasn’t known as ‘John of the Cello’ for nothing, because the stylistic and virtuosic variety is extraordinary to the point of feeling experimental…the tone produced by Sollima on his 18th-century Venetian instrument has a slightly ‘dirty’ quality, heavy on energetic panache, which perhaps won’t appeal to everyone but is certainly dispatched with wizardly skill” - Gramophone Magazine, July 2016 (GCD923801)