Vivaldi 12 Sonatas

Amid the sea of compositions Antonio Vivaldi left for the violin, the Red Priest was also gracious enough to enhance the cellist's repertoire with a nice assortment of concertos and even a handful of sonatas with basso continuo. These works, while satisfying and pleasing, are far from virtuoso works and as such have often been relegated to serve as teaching pieces for high school and college students. In the right hands, however, these nine sonatas can still engage and excite listeners. Cellist Jaap ter Linden would seem to be ideally suited for this task. His distinguished career includes cello performances with many of the world's top Baroque orchestras, as well taking on conducting duties with the same.

Federico Guglielmo whittles down his ensemble L’Arte dell’Arco to just three or four players for his latest release of Vivaldi’s music. Unlike other Vivaldi performers, Guglielmo is keen to return to the transparency of the Prete Rosso’s music, stripping away the ornate embellishments that have encumbered recent recordings, allowing the fluid lines to speak for themselves. In these Violin and Trio Sonatas, Guglielmo and his fellow musicians once again establish themselves as some of the foremost interpreters of the Italian’s music. For the most part bright and jolly, these sonatas demand to be played with charm and joie de vivre, which L’Arte dell’Arco certainly supply in abundance.

In 1997, Roel Dieltiens gathered a group of internationally respected musicians with whom he worked on a scrupulous, in-depth, and fresh interpretation of lesser-known 19th-century repertoires: Ensemble Explorations. One of the ensemble's motivational forces has been to elude a musical approach determined by force of habit. In order to achieve their goal, the ensemble has sought to (re)discover and systematically investigate score materials, composers, and style periods. Within this philosophy, the use of period instruments has always been an obvious and natural choice. In the past decade, the ensemble has managed to restore important composers to their authentic environment, devoid of all dreary conventions.