Salvatore Accardo

Salvatore Accardo, Audiophile Violin. This LP is about music, more precisely, the impressive work of the greatest living exponent of the Italian violin tradition, Salvatore Accardo. Produced and recorded by Giulio Cesare Ricci, who has put together a varied program from millennium shots by the old masters: The Beethoven Romance No. 2 with the Accardo-founded and led Orchestra da Camera Italiana starts off Side 1 with a convincing and moving performance. Pablo de Sarasate's "Carmen Fantasy" for Accardo is a home game, so to speak; only a few are likely to be as familiar with this virtuoso pinnacle of literature.

After establishing his name with THE complete Paganini violin concertos on DG in the early 1970s Accardo migrated freely between record companies. His Collins coupling of the Elgar and Walton concertos remains a highlight for me and is now reissued on the budget Regis label. The sojourn with Philips also bore healthy fruit.

Concerti (8) per violino? With a different title, this disc could do well. Why shouldn't it? In Salvatore Accardo, it has the best Italian violinist of the past 50 years. In I Musici, it has the best Italian chamber orchestra of the past 50 years. And, of course, in Antonio Vivaldi it has the most popular Italian composer of instrumental music of all time.

For several decades beginning in the 1950's I Musici was the leading ensemble specializing in Italian Baroque music, and their performances were standard-setting in their time. Their recordings still hold up exceptionally well even though approaches to early music, driven by the period instrument revolution, have changed somewhat since then.