This has been an excellent
series so far and the third volume is
no exception. Glyn Pursglove was moved,
instructed and delighted by the first
volume – see review
– he made Volume 2 Recording of the
Month – see review
– and I see no reason to withhold the
title from Volume 3: I’m sure that it
will be one of my Choices of the Year.
Volume 1 charted the rise of the concerto
up to and including early Vivaldi; Volume
2 was an all-Vivaldi affair; this third
volume places him in the context of
three important younger contemporaries.
Vivaldi is well represented
in the catalogue and, unfortunately,
the earlier Avie recordings cut across
some of my favourite recommendations.
For once, however, I’m prepared to forgive
the duplication when the quality is
as good as this. In fact, there appears
to be only one other version of RV562a
and RV569 (Modo Antiquo on Tactus TC672206
with other multiple-instrument concertos),
and I can find only one version of the
alternative RV562, with a different
slow movement, in the current catalogue,
on DVD.
Both the Vivaldi concertos
are fine works, quite different from
each other, and I’m surprised that they
are not better represented in the catalogue.
Locatelli is seriously
under-represented: he doesn’t even feature
in the current Penguin and Gramophone
Guides. Only his Op.1 and Op.3 receive
much attention, so these versions of
Op.4/11 and Op.4/12 neatly complement
a Challenge Classics CD of some of the
other Op.4 works (CC72134, Ton Koopman).
The excellent AAM/Manze Harmonia Mundi
recording of his Op.5 concertos after
Corelli, to which I referred in my review
of the Corelli originals last year now
no longer appears to exist even in its
diminished single-CD format.
Dynamic are currently
recording Sammartini’s Symphonies and
Overtures – I recently reviewed
some of them – but, again, his concertos
don’t make much of a showing. Tartini,
whose only work which most know is the
‘Devil’s trill’ sonata, is hardly in
better state as far as his concertos
are concerned, so all the music on the
new CD is very welcome – and it’s all
very attractive and varied.
There are so many fine
baroque ensembles nowadays that it’s
hard to choose between them. Fabio Biondi’s
Europa Galante must rank high among
them – I very much enjoyed their CD
of music by Vivaldi, Sammartini et
al, entitled Improvisata,
Virgin 3 63430 2, last year – and Il
Giardino Armonico another. I also very
much liked the Accademia Bizantina/Ottavio
Dantone in Vivaldi’s Op.8 (Arts
47564/5), though I was recently
slightly less impressed by Dantone’s
Bach concertos. Apart from the fact
that several of Il Giardino’s excellent
recordings of Vivaldi are now available
at budget price, which gives them something
of an advantage, La Serenissima now
most definitely stand very high in this
select company, in my estimation – and
what a wonderful title that is for a
group specialising in the music of La
Serenissima – Venice – herself.
Everything about their
performances here is perfectly judged,
right down to the percussionist’s evident
enjoyment of the unusual drum thwacks
in RV562a. There is not a single wrong
foot here, as far as I’m concerned:
proportions and tempi sound just right
– this is not the kind of dangerous
but exciting playing that I recommended
from the Accademia Bizantina; it’s even
slightly tamer than Europa Galante,
but I don’t always want to live dangerously.
In calling it ‘tamer’ I certainly don’t
mean to make it sound dull; the playing
here is lively enough – much more enjoyable
than seems to be the case at the soirée
depicted on the otherwise very attractive
cover, where the audience appear to
be bored with the playing of the very
civilised group of musicians seated
around a table in the centre of the
room.
Eager to obtain this
recording, having failed in my bid to
review it, I downloaded it from emusic.com
in very adequate sound – certainly good
enough for me to report that the recording
engineers have done their jobs as well
as the musicians. Most of the tracks
are at the maximum for mp3, 320k, though
track 4 inexplicably weighs in at just
below the magic 192k, according to Windows
Explorer. I have noted this variable
bit-rate before and am puzzled by it
– perhaps eMusic would like to explain
the discrepancy?
You don’t get the notes,
of course, from eMusic or from iTunes
or classicsonline, where the recording
is also available. That’s less of a
problem than with the music of the obscure
Ippolito Ghezzi, which I recently reviewed,
but I’d still like it to be possible
for prospective purchasers to have access
to the notes in the booklet – at the
cost of an extra track, if necessary.
Chandos, who provide booklets with their
own and Coro recordings to downloaders
from their theclassicalshop.net, offer
320k versions of all three volumes of
this series but unfortunately don’t
include the booklets with their Avie
downloads.
If you want the notes
– usually a strong feature of Avie recordings
– you will have to buy the CD.
Brian Wilson
La Serenissima/Adrian Chandler (violin)
AVIE
AV2154 [79:25] 
