Le Consort/Théotime Langlois de Swarte (violin)
Harmonia Mundi HMM902373.74 148 mins (2 discs)
Anyone who believes the old joke that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 400 times should listen to this. It follows on from the same performers’ 2022 recording of concertos by Leclair, Locatelli and Vivaldi, but this time focuses exclusively on the Red Priest’s output.
The album’s title, Concerti per una vita (Concertos for a Life), describes a programme that traces Vivaldi’s 40-year output from a transcribed aria by his teacher Giovanni Legrenzi to the valedictory chaconne from his RV 583 Violin Concerto. In between are works relating to his performers, pupils and dedicatees. Some are claimed as ‘world premiere’ recordings; others are presented in unfamiliar guises – like the Genoa manuscript version of ‘Summer’ from The Four Seasons, which bristles with unvarnished rusticity.
The musicologist Olivier Fourés, who reconstructed some of the unfinished pieces, says the album completes the recording to date of all Vivaldi’s known instrumental compositions. Debatable, but there is no doubt about the exceptional playing of both soloist and orchestra, directed by Langlois de Swarte himself – alternately exuberant, wayward, introspective and melancholic, they move seamlessly between the various genres and playing styles that marked the changes in Vivaldi’s career.
Authenticists won’t be pleased by the addition of a guitar, psaltery and ottavino spinet in continuo passages, or by the beefing up of the string section in three horn concerto movements. But the exquisite simplicity of the Andante from the Violin Concerto RV 267a – Vivaldi’s tribute to his pupil Anna Maria – is enough to win over even the hardest of traditionalists.
We named Vivaldi one of the greatest Italian composers of all time.