Vivaldi Estro

For several decades beginning in the 1950's I Musici was the leading ensemble specializing in Italian Baroque music, and their performances were standard-setting in their time. Their recordings still hold up exceptionally well even though approaches to early music, driven by the period instrument revolution, have changed somewhat since then.

This is not just another disc (or, in this case, double disc) of Vivaldi violin concertos, but rather one of very few discs on the market to treat a chronological aspect of Vivaldi's career. In question here are early works by the Red Priest. These concertos date from around 1700 to 1710 and were thus composed prior to the appearance of the L'estro armonico, Op. 3, and La stravaganza, Op. 4, sets that made Vivaldi's name. Most of them appear on other recordings, but many were only recently authenticated. And not very many musicians have tried to draw a portrait of Vivaldi as a young man.

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 Pieta in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a violinist of Tatar origin currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, particularly 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 informed performance practices in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires.

The chamber orchestra Cappella Istropolitana was founded in 1983, taking its name from the Roman Istropolis, the city on the Danube that is the modern Bratislava, a name that had been perpetuated in the renowned Renaissance Universitas Istropolitana. The orchestra has appeared throughout the world and has won distinction in the recording, broadcasting and television studios, working often under distinguished conductors in a comprehensive repertoire; it has more than ninety CDs to its credit. In 1991 the City Council appointed the orchestra Chamber Orchestra of the City of Bratislava.

With his album "Concertos" the charismatic mandolinist Avi Avital fulfills a dream and collaborates with the renowned ensemble for historical instruments "Il Giardino Armonico" and its conductor and founder Giovanni Antonini. Together they interpret three concertos for mandolin by Emanuele Barbella, Giovanni Paisiello and Johann Nepomuk Hummel, as well as Avital's own arrangements of concertos by J. S. Bach and Vivaldi. Of the three original works for mandolin, two are from Naples.

These works, often thought of in terms of being ‘immature’, are currently under recorded. This is a pity because although lacking in the depth of Vivaldi’s next opus, the masterwork ‘L’Estro armonico’, these sonatas are sophisticated and artful studies.

Renowned, American born violinist & conductor, Yehudi Menuhin was a vegetarian and committed supporter of many social and environmental causes, with a great interest in Yoga and eastern religion. He was considered one of the greatest violinist of all time and this EMI recording of "Violin Voncertos by Vivaldi" is an excellent introduction to his work Performed by the Polish Chamber Orchestra.

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.

Vivaldi’s concertos – so irresistibly inventive and colourful – have become central to the world’s appreciation of Baroque music. In the composer’s own time his brilliantly innovative works created something of an international sensation, even exciting the admiration of Johann Sebastian Bach. Doing full justice to the Venetian master’s genius, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante give performances of captivating virtuosity and immediacy.