Vivaldi

Julia Lezhneva, Franco Fagioli and Diego Fasolis: three stars of the Baroque unite to record Vivaldi’s most popular choral work.

Alongside our comprehensive limited and numbered edition of the legendary Claudio Abbado’s complete recordings for DG, Decca and Philips, we are in the process of issuing 16 digital albums covering the same repertoire. The penultimate release in this series of e albums, which are organised in alphabetical order of composer name, features Abbado’s Vivaldi, Wagner & Galas recordings and is available now.

Another recording of The Four Seasons? A year after ‘Concerti per una vita’, the orchestra of Le Consort, in the course of its exploration of Vivaldi, reveals the many facets of this inexhaustible cycle. To achieve this, Théotime Langlois de Swarte has held up a subtle mirror to other works by the ‘red-haired priest’. All of them perpetuate the seasons in their own way, through shared memories and impressions; in the background Lambranzi's Venetian dances complement this musical picture awash with colours!

Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.