Vivaldi Violin Concertos Carmignola

The program begins with the most famous Vivaldi work of all, programmatic or not, the four violin concertos known as Le Quattro Stagioni or the Four Seasons. The rest of the music is much rarer.

This premiere recording of six Vivaldi concertos is full of surprises. The works are entirely unknown because, unlike his other compositions, they were written not for publication but for substantial private commissions from wealthy patrons. Dating from his most mature years, they exhibit a style very different from his earlier concertos, which often sound almost mass-produced. Though they are still cast in the customary three movements and are full of the usual sequences, they are more unpredictable, dramatic, and daring; adventurous in form, harmony, and texture; with sudden contrasts of mood, character, and expression. The slow movements are meltingly beautiful, but no two concertos are alike, either in detail or overall effect. Some movements hardly seem to hang together; they appear to consist of collages of motives, punctuated by bursts of virtuosity.

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 - Viktoria Mullova & Giuliano Carmignola - Double Concertos
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 313 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Archiv Produktion # 477 7466 | Country/Year: Europe 2008
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…Mullova and Carmignola provide one of the most consummate displays of period instrument playing that I have heard. True masters of their instruments.

When we refer to the "Bach Double," most classical music aficionados know what's being discussed: Johann Sebastian Bach's Concerto for two violins in D minor, BWV 1043. Apart from reconstructions, it's his only double concerto for two violins. With Antonio Vivaldi, such an abbreviated designation is impossible, as he has 27 – count 'em – 27 double concertos for two violins.

This release of Bach's well-explored violin concertos (plus a couple of arranged keyboard concertos) by Italian violinist Giuliano Carmignola delivers truth in advertising on its back cover: the violinist, playing a 1739 Guidantus and leading the historical-instrument ensemble Concerto Köln, "seems to cast fresh light on these much-loved masterpieces by imbuing them with all the joyfulness of his Venetian sound."

Claudio Scimone is one of the international leaders of the chamber music and early music movements. He studied with Dimitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara, and also studied early music and interpretation. In 1959, he formed the chamber orchestra I Solisti Veneti in Padua and has remained associated with it ever since. It quickly achieved a reputation for excellence, and in 1975, Scimone took the orchestra for its first appearance at the annual Salzburg Festival in Austria, only to be invited back every year since.