Vivaldi 12 Sonatas

A celebration of instrumental Baroque splendour! This set present an anthology of Italian Baroque composers, featuring their instrumental output. Obviously the famous composers have their fair share: Vivaldi, Albinoni, Locatelli, Corelli, but also lesser known composers are featured: Barsanti, Bassani, Veracini, Nardini, Stradella, Vitali, Mancini, Platti, Legrenze and many more, over 30 composers! Performances by leading ensembles specialized in the Historically Informed Performance Practice: L'Arte dell'Arco/Federico Guglielmo, Ensemble Cordia/Stefano Veggetti, Violini Capricciosi/Igor Ruhadze, MusicaAmphion/Pieter Jan Belder and many more. A treasure trove of solo concertos, concerti grossi, sinfonias, overtures, trio sonatas and solo sonatas from the Golden Era of the Italian Baroque, era of joy, passion and brilliance!

London Baroque offers another installment in its ongoing European Trio Sonata series, this time devoted to 18th-century Italy; as with the ensemble’s previous efforts the program features generally excellent performances of lesser-known repertoire. Ten years ago I reviewed a similar 18th-century Italian program by this same group titled “Stravaganze Napoletane”, also on BIS, and was generally impressed with the performances–except for one piece: Domenico Gallo’s Sonata No. 1 in G major.

Antonio Vivaldi - Pieter Wispelwey & Florigelium - 6 Cello Sonatas
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 280 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Channel Classics # CCS 6294 | Country/Year: Europe 1994
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…Wispelwey plays an English instrument by Barak Norman (1710) whose bright, immediate timbre is a welcome asset in these sonatas. An involving issue, enhanced by discreetly balanced and mercifully uncoloured recorded sound.

Antonio Vivaldi - Suonata a violoncello solo Del Signor Antonio Vivaldi
Les Basses Reunis / Bruno Cocset
EAC+LOG+CUE | WV: 363 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Alpha # 004 | Country/Year: France 1999
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…This CD indeed offers a new approach to Antonio Vivaldi with recordings of absolutely rare chamber repertoire. The sonatas are for violoncello solo, but are here performed with a variety of continuo instruments: harpsichord, organ, theorbo, guitar and double bass or violone. The whole is very closely and clearly recorded, giving the listener the opportunity to savour the delightful sound combinations and the intense violoncello playing of Bruno Cocset who, although definitely an early music specialist, here reminds me of Pablo Casals in the way he invests "soul" particularly in the slower movements…

This set brings together recordings of Italian music by Chiara Banchini and Amandine Beyer. It is symbolic of a filiation between the two artists, Amandine Beyer having succeeded Chiara Banchini as professor of Baroque violin at the Schola Cantorum in Basle, Switzerland. The release follows Amandine Beyer s recording of Bach s Sonatas for solo violin as well as Chiara Banchini s recording of his Sonatas for violin and keyboard, both of which received a Diapason d Or. The set includes the re-release of Vivaldi s Four Seasons by Amandine Beyer.

SEON (Studio Erichson) is a period music label by the legendary producer Wolf Erichson. Erichson founded the label in 1969 as one of the first labels dedicated only to authentic music. The recordings were made with the best available recording techniques of the time and still deliver a high quality product in line with today's standards. This special boxset offers all SEON CD reissues from the late 90s on 85 CDs in a limited edition boxset.

Between 1990 and 2000 Ilario Gregoletto recorded four CDs of harpsichord sonatas by Baldassare Galuppi (1706-85) for the small Italian label Rivoalto. Newton Classics now reissues the discs together as a budget-priced set. The booklet notes are not completely clear in regard to the sonatas’ numbering, apart from mention of cataloging systems by Hedda Illy and Fausto Torrefranca. In any event, all but one of these 25 sonatas follow a three-movement scheme, and each is marvelously varied in mood and texture.

The 17th and 18th centuries marked the era of Enlightenment, overseas exploration, unprecedented European economic expansion and a flourishing of art and culture, not to mention the birth of the greatest composers in history. From concertos to fantasias, suites to sonatas, Brilliant Classics presents a comprehensive and concise overview of this innovative and groundbreaking period in musical history, the Baroque era. The set opens with Venetian composer Tomaso Albinoni and his famous Concerti a5, in which he was the first Italian composer to use the oboe as the solo instrument in a concerto.

The twelve concertos in this recording constitute what is known as a manuscript set. For Vivaldi, as for most of his contemporaries in the early eighteenth century, most sets, usually comprising six or twelve compositions of similar kind, were printed from movable type or engraved and then sold to the general public. Manuscript sets, in contrast, were written out neatly by hand and sold or presented to a single patron. For this reason, they are likely to be ‘customised’ in some way especially relevant to the patron.