Liszt Ference Chanber Orchestra Vivaldi

The cover may clue you in that you're not getting a conventional recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons here, but just in case that doesn't do the job, this is, in the words of violinist Roby Lakatos (who writes his own utterly distinctive notes), "Vivaldi alla Gypsy." This involves not only a cimbalom but, in some sections, wholesale rewriting of Vivaldi's score (the central movement of "Winter" brings the biggest departure). Lakatos says that he made the album because his label wanted him to record a classical repertory work, but the links between the gypsy tradition and the classics is centuries old, and Lakatos comes from a musical family that taught Franz Liszt back in the day. Lakatos is undoubtedly an exciting and dynamic player. One might object that the logic in when he sticks to the score and when he takes it merely as a stimulus to new music-making is not entirely clear.

Vivaldi is greatly over-rated - a dull fellow who would compose the same form over many times. Such is the opinion of one of the great composers on the music of another great composer. Given the evidence of the present newly re-released complete Vivaldi cello concertos incredulity can be the only response to this assessment. But then Stravinsky was a man who voiced strong, often acerbic and sometimes outrageous opinions on virtually anything suggested to him. He had probably heard few, if any, of these cello concertos and irrespective would it have made any difference?

Michelle Barzel Ross is an Iraqi(Mizrahi)-American violinist, composer, and improviser. A protégé of Itzhak Perlman, Michelle is known for her debut album, pop-up project and blog Discovering Bach: Complete Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach. A gifted improviser across genres, Michelle is featured on Movement 11’ of the GRAMMY winning Best Album of the Year: We Are, by Jon Batiste. This season, Michelle has the honor of performing with the Juilliard String Quartet as guest first violinist for their winter International and US tours, while Areta Zhulla is on maternity leave.

“Citterio’s affinity for Vivaldi has become very clear in her short time with Tafelmusik. Her splendid playing always delights. Yet it is in her invitational style of leadership that she brings the orchestra to perform with precision, joy and sparkling musicality.” A landmark Tafelmusik recording, Vivaldi con amore is the orchestra’s first with Music Director Elisa Citterio. This all-Vivaldi album showcases Citterio and members of the orchestra in concertos for violin, oboe, bassoon, and lute, underlining the level of virtuosity across the ensemble.

There are people who buy everything Yo-Yo Ma releases, and that's a good thing: his incessant musical curiosity and his ability to carry his audience with him constitute a true bright spot in today's classical music scene. Fans of the two Simply Baroque discs Ma recorded with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra will find much to like in Vivaldi's Cello, featuring the same musicians and offering several Vivaldi cello concertos plus Vivaldi works arranged for cello and ensemble by Koopman.

As the notes to this welcome release make clear Stokowski had never conducted The Four Seasons before the Phase Four series of LPs of which this is so engaging an example. He, soloist Hugh Bean and the New Philharmonia went to the BBC’s Maida Vale studios and taped it for later broadcast (in the end it wasn’t until 1968 that it hit the airwaves), recording it the following day. The late Hugh Bean has recalled that it was in the can in one session – Stokowski remaining the professional to his batonless fingertips.

When the German transverse flute found its place in Italy and was accepted by the Catholic church as a suitable replacement for the proscribed recorder, Antonio Vivaldi took to it with great enthusiasm. His flute concertos mark a point of departure, coming after he had completed his 40 bassoon concertos and virtually all of the string concertos. Although some of these pieces were reworkings of material previously composed for recorder, Vivaldi came to capitalize on new techniques he learned from Ignazio Siber, the flute instructor at the Ospedale della Pietà. Of Vivaldi's 15, the 7 flute concertos presented here were freshly written for the instrument.

Vivaldi's violin concertos, of which some 500 appear to be extant, were first written to showcase the composer's virtuosity on the violin, and so it is no wonder that this small selection of four concertos puts Monica Huggett in the limelight, her sweet violin tone generally dominating proceedings, although not altogether to the exclusion of the London Vivaldi Orchestra and its leader Roy Goodman.

Here is Vivaldi-playing with a commendably light, athletic touch. It's so easy to make a meal out of his orchestral tuttis yet these performances inspire the music with expressive delicacy and rhythmic vitality. The programme is a colourful one of concertos for a variety of instruments, wind and strings, in various combinations.