Incanto e Passione - Violoncello da spalla e pianoforte

**Enchantment and Passion**
*A Musical Journey from Purcell to Debussy*

Alberto Vitolo, shoulder cello
Gabriele Aleo, piano

Sunday, 8 November 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
St Andrew’s Church of Scotland, Via XX Settembre 7, Rome

Music by Bach, Purcell, Vivaldi, Corelli, Paganini, Schubert, Fauré, Rachmaninoff and Debussy

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### Notes on the Shoulder Cello

“Between the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, the shoulder cello was a popular instrument among violinists, if only because of the wider range of opportunities it offered them.

They used it to play the bass line, accompaniments, and also obbligato solo parts. Composers wrote sonatas and concertos for this instrument, or pieces that could be performed on it, and it was widely used as an obbligato instrument in arias from church or chamber cantatas.

Cellists/violinists from northern Italy travelled throughout Europe. In Catalonia, Caldara, Bononcini and Dall’Abaco left their mark. The violinist, shoulder cellist and researcher Diana Roche of Barcelona is carrying out research into a substantial body of church cantatas by Catalan composers, who regularly employed the five-string *violoncello piccolo* in solo and obbligato parts between the late seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth century.

Some instruments very similar to the shoulder cello we use today are still preserved in museums. Those made by Johann Christian Hoffmann, a friend of Johann Sebastian Bach and a luthier, are simply the most famous and relevant examples. We have records of five such instruments; unfortunately, two were lost during the war. Of those that still exist, one is in Leipzig, one in Brussels and one in Berkeley. One of these five instruments appears in the inventory made after Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s death, while another was owned by the Thomaskantor until the Second World War.”

Daniela Gaidano

*Maestro A. Vitolo plays a shoulder cello made by the luthier Alessandro Visintini.*
Web: www.amrds.it