Genaux brings a fascinating swagger to the solo motets. Her chest voice has a baritone richness; in higher registers, she can sound virginal or diva-ish. Zooming through scalar passages and leaping around registers, she turns doggerel Latin into moving statements…Urged on by Dubrovsky, the Bach Consort Wien bustles through [the Kyrie and Credo]…this performance would make Vivaldi proud.
As the notes to this welcome release make clear Stokowski had never conducted The Four Seasons before the Phase Four series of LPs of which this is so engaging an example. He, soloist Hugh Bean and the New Philharmonia went to the BBC’s Maida Vale studios and taped it for later broadcast (in the end it wasn’t until 1968 that it hit the airwaves), recording it the following day. The late Hugh Bean has recalled that it was in the can in one session – Stokowski remaining the professional to his batonless fingertips.
Gripping choral singing, but weighty and deliberate with an expressive palette better suited to Handel's later, more grandiose choral works than his earliest. The soloist are pleasuring pure and clean in tone.
Vivaldi discoveries are not infrequent. …a third D major setting by the composer of the Vespers psalm Dixit Dominus, appears here on disc for the first time. It is a splendid piece: with scoring including woodwind and trumpet, it begins with a brief but dazzling chorus and concludes with a rewardingly worked fugue. Among the several intervening sections, a duet for two tenors, highly ornamented and vivaciously sung by Paul Agnew and Thomas Cooley, the chorus 'Juravit Dominus' and a contralto aria… sung with sensibility by Sara Mingardo.
La Fida Ninfa premiered during the Verona carnival of 1732 at the Teatro Filarmonico. The work was composed to help celebrate the opening of the theatre, which had been postponed for two years, since at that time, the city had been surrounded by foreign military troops. The production was spectacular, and included elaborate ballets by Andrea Cattani, a famous ballet master from Poland, as well as sumptuous sets by Francesco Bibiena. “Vivaldi's score is a ravishing one, offering a rewarding sequence of beguiling arias, duets, a trio and a quartet. Sandrine Piau (Licori) and Verónica Cangemi (Morasto) take on the considerable vocal challenges of demanding roles with their usual tonal warmth and bravura, while Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Elpina) provides the necessary emotional contrasts.
Karina Gauvin…is comfortably able to get the better of Vivaldi's coloratura, athletic intervals and ornaments….Gauvin offers…[an] affecting performance of two motets, one of them, 'Sum in medio tempestatum' a real rarity in performance.
JS Bach and Vivaldi s' Magnificat's: desert island repertoire to illustrate the splendour of the orchestra Le Concert des Nations and choir of La Capella Reial de Catalunya. Jordi Savall offers a vivid and striking performance of these two masterpieces, recorded live at the Royal Chapel in Versailles in 2013. Each of them is introduced by a concerto by the same composer in the same tonality. The superlative performance of Pierre Hantaï in the Concerto BWV1052 is another jewel to the crown of this album. The bonus DVD features both Magnificats and Bach s Concerto.