Modo Antiquo

In his definitive study of the composer's life and work, Michael Talbot spoke of the prospect of 'perpetual discovery' in respect of Vivaldi, resulting from a neglect spanning centuries. 'Scarcely a year passes,' he wrote in 1978, 'without the announcement of some fresh discovery'. This CD gives an excellent example of what we might expect even now, 30 years after Talbot's study, with a collection of new finds from just the last year and a half!

An innovator and a revolutionary composer, its thanks to the Red Priest that the solo concerto made its way through Europe, influencing the likes of J. S. Bach and Handel and the subsequent course of music history. Published in 1714 (or 1716 as most scholars today tend to believe) and reprinted illegally numerous times in pre-copyright Europe, La Stravaganza, Op. 4 contains 12 solo concertos which can be defined as unsurpassed models of their kind, and the manifesto of Vivaldis aesthetic.

The so-called “Anna Maria Partbook” consists of an elegantly bound volume in red leather containing the violin parts of 31 violin concertos, of which 26 are by Antonio Vivaldi. It was the personal repertoire of Vivaldi's most gifted pupil, the famous “Anna Maria della Pietà”, who played also the viola d'amore, the mandolin, the theorbo, and the harpsichord. Anna Maria's partbook represents an extraordinary collection of violin concerts of high virtuosity.

Alessandro Scarlatti is generally considered one of the most important Italian composers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. But his music, although it has received more attention in recent years, is still largely unknown. This is partly due to the large quantity of his output: in the genre of the chamber cantata alone at least six hundred compositions are with certainty attributable to him.

Handel Arias is the solo debut of one of the most exciting bass-baritones of today. Expertly advised by Baroque expert, Francesco Lora, Ildebrando fashions his debut album into a panoramic sweep of Italian Handel arias for bass-baritone. Mixing well-known and rare, lyric with highly virtuosic, Ildebrando’s phenomenal Handel shows the versatility and wide range of Handel’s compositions for bass-baritone and the vocal capacity of the singer to master this programme. Undeniably appealing to all voice and Baroque music lovers, this album will excite music lovers well beyond.

Recorded in 2002, this release contains a unique program of the complete overtures of all Vivaldi’s operas. As an opera composer, Vivaldi has long been neglected, but these works showcase his great dramatic genius. Performances on period instruments by Modo Antiquo, conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli, one of the foremost specialists in this field, who has also recorded for full price labels such as Naïve and Deutsche Grammophon.

Antonio Vivaldi composed Arsilda, Regina di Ponto for the Venetian theater of Sant'Angelo in the fall of 1716. While Vivaldi had, by its debut, been an important member of Venetian musical culture for over a decade as a violinist and composer, he had begun composing only three years earlier. Domenico Lalli, his librettist, who settled in Venice in 1710 after fleeing his native Naples upon being charged with embezzlement, was one of the most important librettists of the first decades of the eighteenth century.

Naïve are delighted to announce the world premiere recording of 'Orlando Furioso', the 1714 version. It scored a huge success at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice, where it was directed by none other than Vivaldi and his father. The manuscript, rediscovered 250 years later in Vivaldi’s personal library, now in Turin, was thought to be a revision of an existing 'Orlando' of 1713 by Bolognese composer Ristori. However, the musicologists in charge of the numbering of the works of Vivaldi, Peter Ryom and his successor Federico Maria Sardelli, wondered why Vivaldi should have kept this music in his personal corpus among all his other scores, and noticed that the manuscript featured many different hands and numerous pasted-in corrections of the parts.

The general wall of obscurity surrounding Vivaldi's operas seems to be lifting. Tito Manlio, a large work composed in 1719 for a royal wedding that was called off at the last minute, was recorded on LPs in the 1970s and in 2006 received two new recordings, released at nearly the same time. So much for the theory that opera on recordings is dying! The opera is a compelling one, with a convincing father-son drama: the ancient Roman consul Tito Manlio (or Titus Manlius) plans to have his son executed for disobedience, but the younger Manlio is saved by a flood of acclamation for his military deeds. The opera seria libretto was set by several other composers of the early eighteenth century. Its central role is the young Manlio, intended for a castrato and sung here by soprano Elisabeth Scholl.

Vivaldi's operas are rarely recorded and even less often performed, but happily they are gradually gaining more exposure. The most familiar and most frequently recorded is his 1727 Orlando Furioso. The fact that it has been on the public's radar is due largely to an excellent 1977 recording starring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de los Angeles, which has been reissued on Erato. The opera has since been recorded twice, and a DVD of a 1989 San Francisco Opera production featuring Horne and Kathleen Kuhlmann has been released. The newer CDs are extraordinarily fine; in choosing between Naïve's 2005 version led by Jean-Christophe Spinosi and this CPO release conducted by Federico Maria Sardelli, the listener is in a win-win position. Both feature stellar soloists, who are also compelling actors, and beautiful orchestral playing.