Archi

“although these six concertos are undoubtedly music at the lighter end of the Baroque scale, their unfailing compositional skill and amiable artistic personality are realised with relaxed expertise by a pool of soloists able to run around them with ease. The 16-piece orchestra play with a sunny cordiality, and though their sound is more wispy than punchy, it is recorded with sympathetic soft clarity.” (Gramophone Magazine)

Amazing to think in these days of plenty, when Vivaldi's sun has surely never shone brighter, that there can still be examples of his 660 or so concertos which have yet to be heard on record, but this invaluable set contains one such work, the G minor concerto RV459, as well as all the other works which the Venetian composer originally wrote for an instrument for which he evidently conceived a great affection, well suited as it is to the virtuoso roulades and trills which distinguish his writing for his own instrument, the violin, as well as testing the soloist with great demands on breath control in the fast outer movements and lyrical intensity in the central slow ones.

This is the perfect CD to counter Strawinski's dead-pan remark that Vivaldi just wrote one concerto 500 times.
Of course Igor was right in a sense. It hasn't been untill the last 25 years or so that a clear image of Vivaldi's versatile genious has emerged.
This is a Vivaldi CD that has everything to it. The nearest compeditor is perhaps Trevor Pinnock's excellent recording on ARCHIV, which also features the two mandoline concerti and the Concerto "con molti strumenti" in C major.!