Veneziana

Iiro Rantala takes us through a kaleidoscope of different sound worlds, bringing a virtuoso sense of flow, melodic richness, drama and wide-screen technicolor emotion: "Veneziana" is an enlivening and highly distinctive portrait of a city. One might call it programme music, but it is of a kind that only Iiro Rantala can write…where the listener, as in the winding streets of Venice, will find a new surprise behind every musical corner.

With this volume 4 in a complete recording of Bach’s keyboard works whose ingenuity has been underlined by every reviewer (e.g. Gramophone, July 2020), Benjamin Alard continues to explore the Weimar period, known as that of his ‘early mastery’. After À la française, we turn to Italy, where the Vivaldian concerto reigned in Venice. The young Bach created here a wonderful space of freedom between the transcriber and the improviser. For ‘if transcription is a matter of freedom, it is also a matter of powerful imagination: each piece on this recording transports us into a Venetian universe that fascinated Bach as much as it inspired him’, as Benjamin Alard demonstrates on three exceptional instruments.

Iiro Rantala takes us through a kaleidoscope of different sound worlds, bringing a virtuoso sense of flow, melodic richness, drama and wide-screen technicolor emotion: "Veneziana" is an enlivening and highly distinctive portrait of a city. One might call it programme music, but it is of a kind that only Iiro Rantala can write…where the listener, as in the winding streets of Venice, will find a new surprise behind every musical corner.

Spirited performances by the Budapest Strings, with a major assist from the always estimable Lajos Lencsés, make a strong case for Salieri’s music. Lencsés teams with concertmaster Béla Bánfalvi and cellist Károly Botvay, the group’s artistic director, in the triple concerto and makes beautiful music with flutist János Bálint in the flute and oboe concerto. It all adds up to a most enjoyable disc.