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Le Consort\/Th\u00e9otime Langlois de Swarte (violin)<\/p>
Harmonia Mundi HMM902373.74\u00a0\u00a0 148 mins (2 discs)<\/em><\/p> Anyone who believes the old joke that Vivaldi<\/a><\/strong> wrote the same concerto 400 times should listen to this. It follows on from the same performers\u2019 2022 recording of concertos by Leclair, Locatelli and Vivaldi, but this time focuses exclusively on the Red Priest\u2019s output.<\/p> The album\u2019s title, Concerti per una vita<\/em> (Concertos for a Life), describes a programme that traces Vivaldi\u2019s 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 \u2018world premiere\u2019 recordings; others are presented in unfamiliar guises \u2013 like the Genoa manuscript version of \u2018Summer\u2019 from The Four Seasons<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which bristles with unvarnished rusticity.<\/p> The musicologist Olivier Four\u00e9s, who reconstructed some of the unfinished pieces, says the album completes the recording to date of all Vivaldi\u2019s known instrumental compositions. Debatable, but there is no doubt about the exceptional playing of both soloist and orchestra, directed by Langlois de Swarte himself \u2013 alternately exuberant, wayward, introspective and melancholic, they move seamlessly between the various genres and playing styles that marked the changes in Vivaldi\u2019s career.<\/p> Authenticists won\u2019t 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 \u2013 Vivaldi\u2019s tribute to his pupil Anna Maria \u2013 is enough to win over even the hardest of traditionalists.<\/p>