Grand. On Wednesday we heard an enchanting recorder and a playful harpsichord; in the Small Hall of Ingesund Music High School, the musical spirit of the baroque materialized in the shape of two globetrotting, outstanding, entertaining musicians : Dan Laurin, recorder, and Anna Paradiso Laurin, harpsichord. (…) To be honest, in order to present Johan Helmich Roman (…), promoter of an art in the later galant style and so close to the soul, one requires a kind of knowledge not so common today. In addition, it is necessary to have an artistry on stage that allows to blow life into knowledge, by bringing back accuracy to the humor, existential premises to the depth, immediateness to the optimism (…), as to give back to the time its expressions of life, playfulness, and death. Dan and Anna Paradiso Laurin knew how to do this. (…) From his travels, Roman brought home to Sweden a book by Francesco Gasparini on the art of playing thorough-bass. This book has been studied by the phenomenal harpsichordist of this evening: Anna Paradiso Laurin from Bari. She moved me profoundly with her improvisations on the bass-line, according to the practice of the time. In symbiosis with the recorder, she created extemporaneous expressions of the deepest movements of the soul resulting from the interaction between the two instruments. (…) In Leonardo Leo’s Solfeggi, the music had a power that thanks to Laurin’s artistry reached a far higher level than in its original practical goal. In the solo-piece for harpsichord, Le Vertigo by Royer, Anna Paradiso rendered a painting of a stormy opera-scene with hasty movements and supplicant glances in a unique music-work. A masterpiece! Veracini’s Sonata Sesta was fantastic both in the form and in the phrasing. (…) Dan Laurin performed, together with his harpsichordist, these musical excesses like delicacies. (…)

As last piece, the duo played three movements from Herbert Murrill ‘Sonatina’ (…) to great applause. Two international artists! (Sverker Magnusson, Arvika Nyheter, 4:e April 2019; translated from Swedish by Anna Paradiso).