Vivaldi Rv76

This is an excellent “traditional” version of the Opus 10 Concertos. I Musici returned three times to that cycle, all for Philips. The first was in 1958 with Gastone Tassinari (who had already recorded the complete flute concertos for Vox in 1956 with an ensemble called “I Musici Virtuosi di Milano”, not the same as “I Musici”… ).

Young cellist Han-Na Chang, Korean-born and trained in the U.S. by Mstislav Rostropovich, is a newcomer to Baroque music, having released a mixture of cello classics and late-Romantic and contemporary concertos up to this time. Here she delivers a set of seven Vivaldi cello concertos that Rostropovich himself might have helped her shape; it's something of a throwback to the way Vivaldi was played 30 or 40 years ago.

Today we know that the reason for this penetration of Italian musical tastes into the small principality of Weimar lay elsewhere: the passion of the young prince Johann Ernst of Saxony for the Venetian concertos (and those of Vivaldi in particular). During the prince’s long period of study in Amsterdam, he had occasion to enjoy the exhibitions on the organ in the local Nieuwe Kerk by the blind virtuoso Jan Jacob de Graaf.

This series concentrates on Concertos which survive in manuscript in the Dresden Saxony Landesbibliothek, and which were used by the Court Orchestra. They do not derive from the composer’s residence in the city, and the sleeve note suggests that their existence may be connected with Vivaldi’s association with an influential group of Dresden musicians, most notably the violinist, Johanne Pisendel who visited and studied under the composer during the latter part of 1716, and to whom Vivaldi dedicated a number of his Concertos. The quality of these works is often remarkably high, reflecting the caliber of the orchestra and indeed Pisendel’s virtuosity and musicianship. They sound extremely well in these excellent modern-instrument performances.

After the enormous success of Vivaldi’s earlier collections La Stravaganza and L’Estro Armonico, his publisher Estienne Roger was eager to capitalise on the composer’s soaring popularity. With that in mind, Op.7 was published in 1720 containing 12 new concertos, ten for solo violin and two for solo oboe. However, it seems unlikely Vivaldi either authorised or approved of this publication, and recent research has even discovered that the authenticity of the concertos is doubtful, with at least the two oboe concertos certainly not by Vivaldi. The concertos may not bear the traditional Vivaldian hallmarks, with movements simplified or moved around, but they are still a worthy tribute to the composer, whether penned by the ‘Prete Rosso’ himself or not.

For fans of Il Giardino Armonico's flamboyant flourishes and exuberant expressiveness, it's like having all your birthdays at once, being presented with this great Warner Classics 11 CD set. My own feeling is that this "free" approach to Baroque music is at its best when applied to the theatrical music of disc 8 or the seventeenth century Italian music on disc 1. The showmanship and playfulness is an absolute joy in many of those pieces. I'm less satisfied with the interpretations of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, (on discs 10 and 11), which require a different approach, I feel. I like my Bach to be a little more measured and subtle, I suppose. It has no need of the Il Giardino Armonico treatment. On the whole, though, I do love this set and wouldn't be without it.

[Violinist Fabio Biondi has a singular capacity for finding something new and exciting in the music of Antonio Vivaldi whenever he considers it, a prodigious feat which he demonstrates with Concerti per La Pietà, a new collection of works calling for a variety of demanding solo challenges, superbly met by Biondi and his colleagues from Europa Galante. In his Venetian years the well-spring of Vivaldi an inventiveness was fed by the composer working with one of the leading orchestras of early eighteenth-century Europe: the one at the Ospedale della Pietà, the charitable institution which took in, cared for –and educated – girls who had been orphaned or abandoned.[/quote]

Star violinist Arabella Steinbacher presents Antonio Vivaldi's world-famous Four Seasons alongside Astor Piazzolla's Cuatro estaciones porteñas, creating a lively combination of baroque and tango. The enormous popularity of Vivaldi's Four Seasons tends to make us forget the original and ground-breaking nature of these violin concertos. Coupling them with Piazzolla's tango-inspired Four Seasons of Buenos Aires makes both pieces sound fresher than ever before, thanks to Steinbacher's personal engagement with the repertoire and the inspired accompaniment of the Münchener Kammerorchester.

In his definitive study of the composer's life and work, Michael Talbot spoke of the prospect of 'perpetual discovery' in respect of Vivaldi, resulting from a neglect spanning centuries. 'Scarcely a year passes,' he wrote in 1978, 'without the announcement of some fresh discovery'. This CD gives an excellent example of what we might expect even now, 30 years after Talbot's study, with a collection of new finds from just the last year and a half!