His life, shrouded in mystery, offers plenty of room for speculation and fantasy: Large parts of Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli’s biography lie in unexplored and now probably also unexplorable darkness; he appears in various places, first secured in Innsbruck in 1660, then in Upper and Central Italy, he is preceded by a legendary reputation as a violin virtuoso, he publishes violin works, apparently without worrying about a stringent opus narrative, and the dramatic climax probably comes when he kills a fellow musician in a quarrel in Messina in 1675 and then flees to France and finally to Madrid. His sonatas are no less fascinating: To many they did indeed seem ‘baroque’, i.e. overloaded and bizarre, but today we recognise in them a fascinating link between the virtuoso Italian and the southern German-Austrian baroque instrumental style, with its typical harsh contrasts and surprise effects. Daniel Sepec and his colleagues present them with their usual precision.