Giovanni Battista Sammartini, main exponent of the eighteenth century Milanese instrumental school, was not only a reference for local musicians, but also enjoyed international fame; he was “the most European character of the Milanese scene of the time” (G. Pestelli, 1982). A prominent figure in a complex era, witness and advocate of those stylistic and formal metamorphoses that marked the gradual transition from the late Baroque, heavily influenced by the violinistic school, to the mature gallant style anticipating the classicism by reaching an idiomatic accomplishment. The award-winning harpsichordist Susanna Piolanti performs this unpublished collection of sonatas mostly edited in London during the eighteenth century, in which the search for and the consolidation of a new language never ends: “I will, I will, but my harpsichord will kill me”, senior Sammartini answers to his customers’ requests. After all, the work of a composer always starts from the keyboard.
