Academy of St. Martin in The Fields Vivaldi

Vivaldi's sacred music is not so famous as that of his contemporaries Bach and Handel, so this is a bargain opportunity to catch up. You might think Vivaldi's playful, virtuoso Italianate character and Catholic context would produce radically different music, but in George Guest's urgent readings, the mixture of restrainedly exultant choruses and austerely beautiful arias are near-identical to Bach.

Michala Petri’s version of Vivaldi’s Six Flute Concertos op. 10 with the Academy of Saint-Martin-In-The-Fields under its first fiddler Iona Brown was recorded in July 1980 – almost the prehistory of Vivaldi interpretation, seen 35 years later. And after all, yes, 1980 is almost exactly the middle point between the beginning of the great 20th century Vivaldi revival, heralded by Louis Kaufman’s ground-breaking recording of the Four Seasons on Concert Hall in 1948 (Vivaldi: Twelve Concertos, Op. 8), and today.

The artistry of Holliger (b1939) prompted Evelyn Rothwell (Lady Barbirolli) to call him 'The Paganini of the oboe' Holliger's mastery of the oboe ranges over a vast expanse of repertoire, from the baroque to contemporary – Bach to Berio and Zelenka to Zimmermann. His style is notable for its flexibility, agility, integrity and ability to communicate convincingly across the wide range of repertoire he performs. Holliger has done much to champion the oboe music of composers such as Zelenka and Krommer, and has also had over 100 works composed for him by composers including Berio, Carter, Henze, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Stockhausen.

When the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields began to popularize Vivaldi's music in the 1970s, it was on the cutting edge with its light, warm chamber orchestra sound, burnished to technical perfection yet sounding completely different from its symphonic cousins. Now, a recording like this one, with star violinist Joshua Bell, sounds conservative in comparison with young bucks like Fabio Biondi on the historical-performance side or even the young Dutch firebrand Janine Jansen. This big-budget (by classical standards) release is the kind of thing you don't see so often now, with a big poster showing Bell carefully decked out in a partially undone tie, as well as individual full-color cards reproducing, in Italian and English, the descriptive seasonal sonnets that provide the program for the four concertos. It could have collapsed under its own weight, but Bell pulls it off. Conducting the Academy strings himself, he forges tight, not-overly-sweet recordings of Vivaldi's four familiar concertos, with a nice contrast between orchestra and solo that showcases his easy, compelling agility and his Heifetz-like sharpness and brilliance.

Five discs - five conductors - four orchestras - nine composers - 28 works: Decca's collection Ultimate Baroque is as one might imagine a mixed bag. The best of the set is I Musici's sweet and fresh 1996 recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, with Mariana Sirbu as the lighter-than-air and younger-than-springtime soloist and Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields' stately yet sprightly 1971 recording of Bach's four Suites for orchestra, and Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra's robust and rambunctious 1970 and 1972 recordings of Handel's Water Music suites and Music for the Royal Fireworks.

This 28 CD box set includes the Argo jewels from Marriner’s early recording days with the chamber orchestra he founded in 1958, The Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The edition spans the years 1964-1981, and includes a bonus CD of the first recordings from 1961.The collection concentrates on the Argo years, when the pattern for the Academy’s success was set. Winning performances by soloists such as Alan Loveday and Iona Brown — who in 1974 became Marriner’s successor in directing from the violin – were a key part of the fabric of the Academy’s unique sound. Highlights in this box include the legendary recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and full performances of Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem.

The task of picking "essential masterpieces" for a big-box collection like this is essentially futile. Sure, one could complain that restricting the vocal music to the two Gloria settings distorts Vivaldi's output severely, but any selection would cause complaints - and the compilers could point out that it was instrumental concertos that made Vivaldi popular and instrumental concertos on which his popularity rests. Furthermore, the recordings featured here, mostly by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, are, in many cases, those that turned Vivaldi into an industry - they were the backbone of programming on NPR, the BBC, and their counterparts in other countries for years.

“Indisputably the most consummate artist in the history of the classical trumpet,” was how Gramophone described Maurice André, a musician characterised by both brilliance and refinement. These six CDs, which give pride of place to music from the 18th and 20th centuries, complement some of the most popular concertos ever written for trumpet with an enticing and fascinating selection of rarely-heard works.