Venice Baroque Orchestra The Four Seasons

This EMI release of The Four Seasons gives violinist Sarah Chang top billing (as would be expected) and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra a smaller, less significant listing. As far as the quality of performance goes, however, Orpheus should absolutely be considered the star of this recording with Chang getting the footnote instead. This is simply not the case; from the ridiculously posed glamour photos filling the liner notes to the balance of the performance itself, this album is all about Chang. The most fulfilling aspects are the orchestral tuttis. Orpheus is truly at its best here, playing with as much energy and passion as the much ballyhooed recording with the Venice Baroque Orchestra.

The modern popularity of Baroque music is a striking contrast to its original reception. Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons,' written in 1725, was hardly noticed by music critics until it was revived in the early 1920s. Today it is one of the most recognized compositions of all time. Each mellifluent movement has worked its way into our common cultural language.
This disc, which features a CD-ROM encoding of a video for the "Winter" movement (both Macintosh- and PC-compatible), is a 1993 recording of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. This talented young group is bringing new popularity to its music through nontraditional means. The "Winter" video, which received its broadcast premier on The Weather Channel, gained the attention of a new audience.

Avi Avital re-imagines the sounds of Venice in this vivid homage to the most beloved composer of the Italian Baroque, Antonio Vivaldi. After his introduction with BACH and the colorful, contrasting exploration of world music on BETWEEN WORLDS, on this album Avi presents four popular Vivaldi concerti with the great Venice Baroque Orchestra: Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto, the Lute Concerto (with its famous second movement), “Summer” from the Four Seasons, and the A minor Violin Concerto (familiar to violin students everywhere).

Violinist Giuliano Carmignola and the Venice Baroque Orchestra use a slightly different scoring of Vivaldi's masterpiece, the 1996 Ricordi critical edition, and somehow unveil world premieres of three Vivaldi concertos. Their period-instrument performance of The Four Seasons is beautifully played and recorded. Andrea Marcon's conducting stretches the Adagio movements out, but the group makes up for lost time in some feverish Allegro sections.

Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, 6 Concerti op. 8
I Musici / Federico Agostini
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 274 MB | Full Artwork: 72 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Philips # 426 834-2 | Country/Year: Europe 1990
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

"After hearing I Musici perform, Arturo Toscanini remarked, "Twelve individual instrumental masters, and together the finest chamber orchestra in the world." This Italian ensemble has long attracted international attention for their emphasis on brilliance, strength of attack, and high level of discipline, beginning with their first performances of seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian music. (…) I Musici over the years has constantly built upon its strengths, and the group members to apply the same dedication to their artistry as they did upon formation. Their performances can be heard on over 45 recordings, almost all under the Philips label."

For this new recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Jordi Savall conducts an all-female orchestra, as Vivaldi did in his time at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a violinist of Tatar origin currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, parti- cularly in the field of folk music, playing violin, folk fiddle, kyl- kobiz, ghizzhak and similar instruments. She studied Baroque violin with Enrico Onofri (Palermo Conservatory) and Hiro Kurosaki (Mozarteum University), focusing on historically in- formed performance practices in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires. Such a profile made her the ideal candidate for a collaboration with Jordi Savall. She plays a Francesco Ruggeri violin, built in 1680 in Cremona, Italy. This double album sold at the price of a single new release of- fers the recording of the Four Seasons with and without the son- nets written by Vivaldi and four others concerti by Vivaldi. The version with read text sheds a particularly revealing light on Vivaldi’s work.

Antonio Vivaldi - Four Seasons / Concerto RV317 in G minor / Concerto RV257 in E flat major
Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniel Gaede, violin / Wojciech Rajski
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 289 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Tacet # TACET S 163 | Country/Year: Germany 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

Part of Tacet's "Tube Only" recording series. No transistors were used within the recordig chain.