Vivaldi

It took a while for me to move away from the giants of Romantic era composers to Baroque and that whole area is one where the battle in performance techniques between modern instruments and conventions  from the Victorian period clash with the so-called Historically Informed  Performance techniques in vogue for the last 35 odd years is at its fiercest.

One name associated with it in Great Britain is Brecon Baroque, a ten piece ensemble of musicians who are lead  by the multi-award winning violinist Rachel Podger who specializes in baroque works.

One of the first works in this genre I encountered was Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a sequence of Opus 8 pieces three per suite connected at one point to reading of sonnets around the Four Seasons buying at the time Perlman's recording with the Israeli Symphony Orchestra on tape and eventually on cd Anne-Sophie Mutters recording with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the late Herbert von Karajan for EMI Angel.

Both of those were performed very much 'Modern' and in April this year this recording done in a period style with moderate tempo's (the tendency to play faster in H.I.P performances is a personal irritant) was released recorded in London's St Jude's church.

To me this recording does achieve something worthwhile, the stripping away of layers of cloying strings through the use of a smaller assemble  allowing the freshness of the composition to come through and is played well.

As well it has Il Grosso Mogul, Il Riposo and L'amorso added which adds value to this new recording where my 1984 cd has no extra material at all!

The English language title is The Trail of Inventiveness and Harmony which as you'd expect wasn't one Vivaldi himself give to this series of Opus 3 concertos but a catch all marketing thing  where Vivaldi really pushes the boundaries of what musicians can play through musical invention. 

There have been a few recordings  before but this is new to me and certain adds to ones appreciation of the 'red priests' contribution to classical music.

 This is another set of concertos he wrote, the Opus 4 that predate the famous Four Seasons and have been mainly ignored until recently that Rachel and the Brecon Baroque recorded in 2003. This was issued on regular cd and sacd, mine is the latter.

I love the flute having been bought up with schoolfriends who played woodwind and I did have I Musici's recordings from the late 1960's for Philips on cd being brought with them on tape but that was subject to some questionable sonic manipulation I found hard to listen to so I bought this 2011 release on Accent which is at least as good as playing and technically superior.

While I have a couple of other regular cd's of Vivaldi's music not least that Anne-Sophie Mutter recording of Four Season's that I enjoy hugely, this set of four Super Audio cds have added to my appreciation of Vivaldi's achievements.