Marcin Danilewski, who serves as a concertmaster of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic, graduated from the University of Music in Warsaw, having studied under K. Jakowicz and from the Mozarteum University in Salzburg under I. Ozima. He has performed throughout Europe and in Japan. He currently also serves as concertmaster of the Camerata Pontresina Orchestra, in Switzerland.

Gioacchino Rossini wrote six sonate a quattro, while in Ravenna, at the age of 12. The Rossini family knew the businessman, Agostino Triossi, and in 1804 were invited as guests for the summer at his nearby villa at Conventello. Triossi played the bass and the young Rossini was inclined to create his sonatas around the host’s instrument. Upon their initial reading, Triossi himself played the bass, his cousins the first violin and cello, and Rossini the second violin. These sonate are the earliest of Rossini’s surviving works and their original manuscript, discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C in 1954, proves the original instrumentation. Nonetheless, the first published edition from 1825 was issued for standard string quartet, and a version for wind quartet followed in 1828.

Having come across the score of a manuscript he’d written that summer, an older Rossini described them as, “Six dreadful sonatas composed by me at the country estate of my friend Agostino Triossi, when I was at a most infantile age, not even having taken a lesson in accompaniment, the whole composed and copied out in three days.” Rossini remained in contact with Triossi, who was a friend and patron, for many years, later composing two overtures the Sinfonia al Conventello and the Grand’overtura obbligata a contrabbasso for him as well as the Mass for Ravenna.

Alixandra Porembski, English Language Annotator