Europa Lehrmittel Schnittkonstruktion

The "Stabat Mater" is most substantial. Alternating recitatives and arias, often framed by instrumental ritornellos, it is heartbreakingly mournful, but ends peacefully before closing with a whole aria on "Amen." The other two works are real bravura pieces for the singer. They cover an enormous range and are full of florid coloratura passages and wide leaps. "Nisi Dominus" is very dramatic, with mysterious chromatic lines and big climaxes; "Longe mala" goes from defiant vehemence through fervent entreaty to serene resignation.

There is no complete surviving score for Vivaldi's Ercole su'l Termodonte, but there is enough existing material that modern scholars have been able to reconstruct it primarily by making new settings of the lost recitatives. The first production of the opera since Vivaldi's time was at Spoleto in 2006 in a version by Alessandro Ciccolini, which was released as a DVD. Conductor Fabio Biondi made a version introduced in Venice in 2007, which is recorded on this 2010 Virgin CD. Biondi's recording has the advantage of two international superstars in the leading roles, tenor Rolando Villazón and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and soprano Diana Damrau is nearly in their league. Villazón's earthy voice is usually associated with 19th century and verismo Italian repertoire, but he has an acute sensitivity to Baroque vocal style, and his robust, almost baritonal tenor is entirely appropriate for a larger-than-life character like Hercules.

Het ensemble Europe Galante, onder leiding van Fabio Biondi, is sinds zijn oprichting in 1989 uitgegroeid tot één van de belangrijkste muziekgroepen op het gebied van de zeventiende- en achttiende-eeuwse Italiaanse barokmuziek. Op het programma staan dan ook verschillende Italiaanse componisten uit die tijd. Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) en Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764) waren in hun tijd beroemd om hun virtuoos vioolspel. Hun muziek is tegelijk vurig en virtuoos, maar blijft steeds elegant en hoogst melodieus.

Sweet, intimate, and very dry, Fabio Biondi's of Boccherini's Guitar Quintets with players from Europa Galante and guitarist Giangiacomo Pinardi is ineffably charming, but possibly too etiolated for some taste. But it has the feel of polished oak and such a wonderfully evocative sense of place and time that it is hard not to fall for Biondi and Boccherini. Much of the appeal, of course, is Boccherini's music: filled with luminous light and most tender affection, Boccherini is the chamber music equivalent of the young Goya, and it would take a hard heart not to be beguiled by Boccherini's La ritirata di Madrid or swept up in his wonderfully stylized Fandango. Biondi and Europa Galante may be fay, but they match the music's delicate delights. Virgin's sound is close but with a sense of space around it.

Biondi surmises that Vivaldi wrote this way in aid of his teaching. There was a desire to promote and develop virtuosity – in his pupils of the Ospedale della Pietà As though the composer wished to draw attention to convention by absenting it from the works; and replacing it with styles and "devices" whose very newness emphasized the essence of the form and of Vivaldi's way of respecting it. Throughout, there is exceptional vigor (even for Vivaldi) and drive in the tutti (rarely unison) writing. Biondi directs Euoropa Galante extremely well to discern, internalize then express the structure (at the movement level) and also the sentencing within passages of each of the musical ideas.

Vivaldi was an innovator; that's a fact not always acknowledged so readily as it might be. These CD are full of examples of instrumental writing which broke new ground in the Venice of the start of the eighteenth century. The way in which the violin and organ interact in the central movement of the D minor concerto, RV541 [CD.2. tr.11], for example, was new. The exuberance of the solo passages for cello in the B Flat Major RV 547 [CD.1. tr.11] sound almost Beethovenian. Similarly the extent to which the violin is "encouraged" to stray well outside accepted melodic and rhythmic practice in the E Minor, RV 281 [CD.2 trs.1-3] has to be seen as pioneering at least; ingenious for sure. But at the same time, the playing here is never gratuitously eccentric.

No Baroque work is more familiar than Vivaldi's set of four programmatic violin concertos known as the Four Seasons, yet firebrand Italian violinist Fabio Biondi and his Europa Galante will make you feel as though you're hearing them for the first time in this recording, originally released on the Opus 111 label. Biondi's tempi are fast indeed in the outer movements, and he pushes some of Vivaldi's illustrative episodes into a realm of crescendi and descrescendi that's mighty unusual. And he ornaments the music freely. But his expressive devices are never Romantic – they come off as full-blooded, passionate responses to the music, and they never seem to violate the spirit.

One tends to associate the virtuoso violin repertoire with the 19th century, but in their own way these five sonatas, written between 1714 and 1743, offer an equally dazzling display of speed, facility, bow control and tonal variety. No wonder: the composers were among the foremost violin virtuosos of their time, as well as tireless innovators of technique and style; several even wrote treatises on violin playing. The earliest, and least familiar, is Michele Mascitti, a Neapolitan who moved to Paris when he was 30. His "Psyché," the program's only piece in a major key, is a divertissement in ten short "tableaux" on the theme of Cupid and Psyche, with the violin and continuo as the two protagonists. Refined and elegant, varied in texture, expression and character, it ranges from tender love songs to slow and fast dances, including a wild Badinage.

Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768) is today best known as an eccentric violin virtuoso and composer of instrumental music, but he has also successfully operated as an opera composer during his time in London. His first opera Adriano in Siria was created in 1735 for the London Opera of Nobility, the rival company to Handel's opera troupe. The company had only a few years earlier (including the soprano castrato Senesino and Francesca Cuzzoni) poached all singing stars from Handel. Even worse: since 1734, it could also score with the castrato legend Farinelli. Veracini's Adriano in Siria is, in every respect, a spectacular and fascinating opera. The recording of Fabio Biondi and an appropriate illustrious singers ensemble is based on a highly successful concert performance series of the work at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 2013, which made alive again the spectacular opera event of 1735.