Felice Giardini (1716-96), Turinese by birth, spent most of his career in London, where he played a large part in introducing the new galant style to a rather conservative public in the 1750s; he was involved in running the opera house, in organizing numerous concert series and in playing for charitable events and in private concerts in aristocratic homes. He was a leading figure in London musical life for 40 years and exercised great influence on taste and style. He was a prolific composer, chiefly of instrumental music, which is accomplished technically but decidedly conventional in its actual ideas.
In the selection here, three quartets from his Op. 21 (1778-9) and two from his Op. 25 (1783), there are some pleasing tunes and attractive dialogues, with a number of rather folksy slow movements in the manner fashionable at the time (Op. 25 No. 5, for example) and several quite jolly finales (try Op. 25 Nos. 3 and 5, or Op. 21 No. 2). But there is also rather a lot of music with routine harmony, symmetrical and four-square rhythms and dull sequences, and the melodic writing, often curiously limited in compass, is not always compelling. Still, it is interesting to hear the emancipated harpsichord, which Giardini – though himself a violinist – treated with more enterprise in ensemble writing than did quite a lot of keyboard player-composers, with dialogues and occasional brilliant sallies.
Not all of this writing comes over here as effectively as it should; often concertante passages, for strings as well as keyboard, seem to be covered instead of given due prominence, and the players here are not very skilled at bringing life to the textures, especially those in which chordal harmony on a repeated-note bass plays a large part. But on the whole these are quite decent and attentive performances, and if the music is not of high quality, one should remember that it was designed for the enjoyment of the players rather than for an audience, and that it must often have been heard as an agreeable and inoffensive background in noble homes in the late-eighteenth century; which perhaps indicates a use for this CD, in more modest ones, today.'