Archi

This disc includes five works which in the Vivaldi catalogue are ranked among the concerti con molti stromenti. This can be explained by the fact that various instruments have solo episodes, especially the violins and pairs of oboes and horns. The title could suggest that these concertos were specifically written for the court orchestra in Dresden, but that is not the case. What we get here are rather concertos which the star violinist of the Dresden orchestra, Johann Georg Pisendel, collected over the years and adapted for performance in Dresden. (Johan van Veen)

Pieter Hellendaal is one of those curiously elusive figures from the past, whose life, spent industriously in a musical backwater, left little impression on history, but whose surviving music, although modest in quantity, is of surprising quality. This is the first complete recording of his osagnificant Six Grand Concertos op. 3 (t75g), undoubtedly one of the finest sets of concerti grossi published in England during the eighteenth century, though surely one of the most unjustly neglected today. The son of a Rotterdam candle-maker, Ftellendaal's prodigious talents as a violinist were recognised at an early age when the Secretary of Amsterdam, Mattheus Lestevenon, sent bins (aged barely sixteen) to study in Italy with the virtuoso violinist and composer Guiseppe Tartium…

"This is Opus 111’s first volume of motets for solo voice and string orchestra, perhaps not the best-known part of the composer’s sacred output, but certainly one that is capable of providing a disc’s worth of attractive and buoyant music. One of them, the sweet-natured Nulla in mundo pax sincera, has become relatively familiar thanks to a treasurable recording made by the young Emma Kirkby and its resulting use in the film Shine, but its companions are scarcely less deserving of fame. Their music ranges from the energetic virtuosity of the warlike Invicti, bellate, the nightingale-impersonating Canta in prato, ride in monte or almost any of these works’ concluding Alleluias, to the touching tenderness of the central arias of O qui coeli terraeque serenitas and Longe mala, umbrae terrores…the whole makes an attractive package, and, for newcomers, a handy and seductive introduction to the bold world of Vivaldi’s vocal music."

The "Concerto grosso" was eminently popular in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, Arcangelo Corelli having set the trend with his Opus 6 published around 1710, but probably written much earlier. The main attraction seems to have been the possibilities opened up by having two groups of musicians in dialogue with one another.

Glaetzner is a many-sided musician equally renowned as a conductor, oboe virtuoso, and for his pedagological work. From 1958 until 1962, he studied at the Musikschule der Stadt Berlin (Ost) (East Berlin City Music School) and from 1962 until 1965, he studied in the oboe department of the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" (Hanns Eisler Music Academy) with professor Hans Werner Wätzig.

Giovanni Antonini, virtuoso flautist and orchestral conductor, is the founder of the Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, which burst on the baroque musical scene in 1985; together they have amassed an impressive discography.
With Antonini as soloist in a programme of his own devising recorded between 2011 and 2017, a generous bouquet of the Concerti per Flauto: RV 433 (‘La Tempesta di Mare’), plus the Concertos RV 441, 442 443, 444, and 445, and an amazing version of ‘Cum Dederit’, a solo from Nisi Dominus RV 608, for the chalumeau, the predecessor to the modern-day clarinet.

For fans of the classical mandolin, here is a disc of the best works for the instrument by Antonio Vivaldi, the best friend the mandolin ever had. And for the rest of the world, here is a disc of colorful Baroque concertos by Antonio Vivaldi, the best friend the Baroque concerto ever had. After all, Vivaldi may have been the mandolin's best friend, but even he could only compose so many mandolin concertos.

Telemann wrote wind concertos for up to four solo instruments. A majority of the concertos (including all but one on this recording) are in four movements, usually slow-fast-slow-fast format, though there are many in the Italian three-movement style of fast-slow-fast.

How admirably Telemann succeeds may be heard listening to these concertos. Eschewing the Italian three-movement model of fast-slow-fast, he adheres to the German layout of four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. Also in contrast to the works of his Italian counterparts, who not infrequently fell into the lazy habit of writing the same concerto over and over again, each of Telemann’s examples is strikingly different, not just in its instrumentation, but in its melodic and harmonic content and in the patterning of its passagework. Nonetheless, exquisitely beautiful as some of his slow movements are—listen to the Largo of the A-Major Oboe d’amore Concerto—it would be disingenuous to pretend that Telemann (or German Baroque composers in general) ever mastered the art of the Italian instrumental cantilena that grew out of the melodiousness of the language and Italy’s long vocal tradition. Nothing in these concertos can compare, for example, to the timeless beauty of the Adagio from Albinoni’s D-Minor Oboe Concerto, op. 9/2, written at approximately the same time as the Telemann.