String Concertos

This is a highly distinctive album in the mountain of Vivaldi CDs. The works come from a manuscript in the library of the Paris Conservatory that is thought to have been originally presented to a French nobleman. It is thought that only two of the concertos were new, while the other 10 were chosen from those Vivaldi had on hand. Whatever the truth of this, this set of concertos represents a highly winning, perhaps more subtle aspect of Vivaldi's style than one usually comes in contact with. The works are scored for strings, although Standage doubles them with winds occasionally, as was period practice.

This is a very good recording of a selection of Vivaldi's "concerti a quattro" - concertos for string orchestra without a solo instrument. Here we have a selection from the vast Vivaldi archive in Turin, selected, as Standage tells us, "on musical and pragmatic grounds with the aim of presenting an attractive cross-section".

With this album, Simon Standage continues his survey of the 40 odd concertos for strings by Vivaldi. As with period practice, winds are added to a few of the works. The continuo consists of harpsichord and guitar, the latter a very appealing sounding period instrument. There is less unity of mood on this album than on Volume 1 of this series. Instead, one is prone to gasp at Vivaldi's prodigious invention.

The acclaimed Polish period band Arte dei Suonatori perform eight of Vivaldi’s concertos a Quattro. Their version of Handel’s 12 Concerto grossi Op. 6 was awarded ‘Orchestral Choice of the Month’ in BBC Music Magazine, alongside further critical acclaim from the international music press. As well as being a major composer in the formation of the solo concerto, he also was the leading exponent of the older concerto a quattro – music in four parts, with several players to a part. His works in this genre are notable not only for their beauty, but also for their experimental character and for providing the most important examples of fugal writing in Vivaldi’s instrumental music.

During the 1990s, Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage released several volumes of Albinoni concertos, which proved popular with critics and public alike. The concertos were released as discs of single oboe concertos, double oboe concertos, and string concertos. In this re-issue on the Chaconne label, the concertos are presented in opus number order, showing the contrasting colours and tonalities of the concertos as they originally appeared.

Alba’s new release is the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra's new album 'Pēteris Vasks'. The publication includes two string concertos by Latvian-born composer Pēteris Vasks, the first of which is 'Concerto No. 2 'Klātbūtne' for Cello and String Orchestra' – a three-part concerto for cello and string orchestra. Marko Ylönen will perform as a cello soloist on the recording. The second work on the album is the four-part 'Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra' that features viola player Lilli Maijala as soloist. The orchestra is conducted by Juha Kangas.

This boxed set reassembles largely analog material from existing Lyrita CDs under a new generic grouping. Dates and locations of recording sessions are not given. Lyrita seem always to have been reticent about those details. The sound is a model of its kind – Lyrita were always able to boast glorious sound. The freshly written liner-notes are by the authoritative and accessible Paul Conway and run to ten pages. These are not a simple retread of the original notes by other authors.

The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.

When the German transverse flute found its place in Italy and was accepted by the Catholic church as a suitable replacement for the proscribed recorder, Antonio Vivaldi took to it with great enthusiasm. His flute concertos mark a point of departure, coming after he had completed his 40 bassoon concertos and virtually all of the string concertos. Although some of these pieces were reworkings of material previously composed for recorder, Vivaldi came to capitalize on new techniques he learned from Ignazio Siber, the flute instructor at the Ospedale della Pietà. Of Vivaldi's 15, the 7 flute concertos presented here were freshly written for the instrument.