MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW
RECORDING OF THE MONTH


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb for £12.49 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

 

The Rise of the North Italian Violin Concerto: 1690-1740
Volume Three - The Golden Age

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Concerto for violin, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, strings and continuo RV569 [12:32]
Pietro Locatelli (1695-1764) Concerto da Chiesa in C, Op. 4/11[10:20]
Concerto for 4 Violins, strings and continuo Op 4/12 [12:24]
Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c.1700-1775) Concerto à più Stromenti in E-Flat, J. 73 [13:17]
Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) Concerto for violin, strings and continuo D117 [15:14]
Antonio Vivaldi Concerto for violin, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, timpani, strings and continuo RV562a [13:14]
La Serenissima/Adrian Chandler (violin)
rec. St Paul’s School, 13-16 February 2008. DDD.
CD and AVIE AV2154 [79:25]

Experience Classicsonline


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

 

 

 

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.