Antonio Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca

The program begins with the most famous Vivaldi work of all, programmatic or not, the four violin concertos known as Le Quattro Stagioni or the Four Seasons. The rest of the music is much rarer.

The present recording brings together various examples of night music from the European tradition and constitutes a kaleidoscope refracting the manifold facets of night. In tells of brilliant celebrations, nocturnal love dramas and desires, tender lullabies, ghosts, birds of the night and the most holy of nights. It is Antonio Vivaldi's music that is pivotal to our recording. Providing a bridge between his works and functioning as interludes are songs, diminutions, motets, madrigals, sommeils and chaconnes from Spai, the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Germany and Austria.

Like many of the performances in previous installments, these–three bassoon concertos, two for oboe, and one double concerto for oboe and bassoon–also are characterized by widely contrasting tempos, sharply delineated dynamics, and especially here, a stylish in-your-face approach. From bassoonist Sergio Azzolini’s quite audible intake of breath before beginning the Concerto in D minor and continuing throughout this captivating program, rarely have Vivaldi’s wind concertos been rendered with such a consistent sense of urgency, vitality, and well, attitude.

This milestone of the Arcana catalogue returns with new artwork, new catalogue number (previously A330) and a new cover featuring ‘Boy with Flute’ by the Venetian painter Domenico Maggiotto. All the recorder concertos on this CD were written expressly for flauto or flautino and show the imagination, delicacy, freshness, virtuosity and sometimes even melancholy, which Vivaldi put into his writing for this instrument. Oberlinger has intentionally chosen tuning at 440 Hz since, in Venice, in Vivaldi’s time, tuning was higher than in neighbouring musical centres such as Rome.

Die Blockflötistin und ECHO Klassik-Preisträgerin Dorothee Oberlinger ist mittlerweile weit über die Alte Musik- und die Klassik-Szene hinaus bekannt. Erst Ende vorigen Jahres widmete die Vogue ihr einen Artikel und in der Talkshow »3nach9« begeisterte sie die Zuschauer, auch durch ihr Duett mit Klaus Doldinger. Auf ihrer neuen CD »Flauto Veneziano« widmet sich Dorothee Oberlinger ganz der Flötenkunst Venedigs von der Renaissance bis zum Spätbarock. Die Blockflöte, im Italienischen bis zum Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts schlicht »flauto«, war in Venedig bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts ein sehr beliebtes und verbreitetes Instrument.

Best known for his huge output of concertos for the violin, Antonio Vivaldi produced a sizeable number of concertos for other instruments including the cello, an instrument that was little used as a soloist during Vivaldi's time. In all, there are 27 extant cello concertos that, like the violin concertos, push the instrument's technical and expressive abilities.

This milestone of the Arcana catalogue returns with new artwork, new catalogue number (previously A330) and a new cover featuring ‘Boy with Flute’ by the Venetian painter Domenico Maggiotto. All the recorder concertos on this CD were written expressly for flauto or flautino and show the imagination, delicacy, freshness, virtuosity and sometimes even melancholy, which Vivaldi put into his writing for this instrument.

For over ten years Dorothee Oberlinger (recorder) has been one of the most successful soloists on her instrument. Last year she received her second Echo Klassik award for her CD "Flauto Veneziano" which she recorded together with the Ensemble Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca. Enjoy the program featured on their award-winning recording with works by Mainerio, Verdelot, Castello, Paspuini, Marcello, Vivaldi, and Corelli at the Philharmonie Berlin.

This disc is a sampler of Vivaldi discs released by France's Naïve label, and it's highly recommended to listeners who haven't yet given these recordings a try. The group of performers is pan-European, with French singers and Italian instrumentalists especially strongly represented, but a compilation like this brings home how well this label has done at forging a unified artistic vision. Its Vivaldi indeed tends toward "furious," as the title proclaims; it is also garish, energetic, dynamically extreme, and in every way devoted to making Vivaldi out as a rebel in his time.