Pantheon: Corelli's Orbit

Concerto Köln
Evgeny Sviridov, violin

Berlin Classics 0304477BC
Released: 2026

“This is exactly how Italian Baroque music should be interpreted.” — Klassic-Heute.de, recommendation

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Concerto Köln With *Pantheon – Corelli’s Orbit* , the ensemble creates a musical panorama centred on Arcangelo Corelli and his European network of pupils, admirers and rivals. Together with concertmaster and soloist Evgeny Sviridov, the ensemble explores works by Giovanni Battista Somis, Antonio Caldara, Pietro Castrucci, Giuseppe Valentini, Antonio Vivaldi, Michele Mascitti, Henry Purcell and Corelli himself – composers who, caught between admiration, rivalry and independence, formed their own musical ‘Pantheon’. The album is due for release on 27 March 2026 on Berlin Classics.

Evgeny Sviridov plays a central role as concertmaster and soloist. In Giovanni Battista Somis’s Violin Concerto in F major, he shines as a soloist; as an artistic driving force, he shapes the ensemble’s sound and weaves the album’s diverse aesthetic threads into a cohesive whole. *Pantheon – Corelli’s Orbit* traces Concerto Köln of musical trajectories across Europe – of encounters, exchange and artistic independence. The album is not intended as a museum-style retrospective, but as an invitation to re-enter Baroque soundscapes.

The starting point is Corelli, one of the most legendary composers of the 17th and early 18th centuries – the teacher of an entire generation of violinists, whose tomb in Rome’s Pantheon symbolises his enduring significance to the present day. From here, vibrant networks unfold: Giovanni Battista Somis, a direct pupil of Corelli, brought his art to Turin and Paris and opened up new horizons with his brilliant violin concertos. Michele Mascitti introduced the Italian art of the sonata to Parisian audiences and skilfully blended Corelli’s style with local musical traditions, whilst Pietro Castrucci gained renown in London as the conductor of Handel’s theatre orchestra, where he brought fresh impetus to the scene.

The tensions between veneration and self-assertion also become audible: Giuseppe Valentini, once described as Corelli’s ‘strongest rival’ in Rome, surprises with his ‘nuovo stile’. Just how fluid the boundaries between homage and further development are is also demonstrated by Antonio Caldara, whose dramatic Sinfonia in G minor lends new theatricality to the Baroque concert form, or the carefully selected ‘Preludes & Volentarys’ for solo violin by Corelli and Henry Purcell, which celebrate free invention and attunement to new sonic spaces.