One of the handy things about Antonio Vivaldi, from a violinist/conductor’s point of view, is that few composers sound at once so familiar and so fresh. You can, of course, make up a disc-length program of Vivaldi concertos that everyone already knows; but it’s as easy (and much more fun) to make up a disc-length program of Vivaldi concertos such that only one person in 10,000 will know every piece on the bill.
Violinist Adrian Chandler and the ensemble he directs, La Serenissima, a couple of years ago issued a fine, all-Vivaldi disc as the second recording of three in a series on “The Rise of the North Italian Violin Concerto” on the Avie label. Its new successor is titled The French Connection, and its theme is Vivaldi’s professional and stylistic connections with France.
In truth, it’s easier to hear (or imagine) the “French Connection” than to document it. The linkage Chandler claims seems most plausible in the three string-orchestra works he calls “‘Paris’ concertos,” after their compilation in a manuscript “probably intended [...] for a French nobleman.” The jaunty Ciacona of RV 114 and the slippery ground-bass outer movements of RV 157 are rather out of the way for Vivaldi. In La Serenissima's performance they don’t (they can’t) sound particularly French, but there is something unfamiliar and yet reassuringly vital in the music’s swing.
Those pieces are fairly familiar on recordings, as is the big violin concerto in D, RV 211 (a piece that Chandler, as soloist, fairly blows the pants off). But other parts of the program are rare music, if not recorded premieres. Two incomplete concertos are included — RV 468 (two movements with bassoon solo) and RV 432 (one with flute solo), as well as a complete concerto for bassoon (RV 488), another for violin (RV 185), and two for flute and bassoon, one with strings (RV 438, in a variant version) and one without (RV 100).
Listen to the Music
RV 114 - Allegro
Concerto For Violin, Strings Continuo In D
RV 211 - Allegro Non Molto
This is a disc to dispel stereotypes about Vivaldi the facile striker of copies off a single mold. Certainly there are extant Vivaldi concertos that are more bizarre than any on this recording, in terms both of structure and of instrumentation; but there is enough variety and character and sheer verve here to amuse even the most cynical listener.
Part of that is owing to the performances, of course. Chandler’s violin playing is superb; equally, Katy Bircher’s agile flute and (especially) Peter Whelan’s phenomenally deft and tangy bassoon are a delight, whenever they play. So are the Serenissima strings (fuller and stronger than the average “period” band, yet also lithe and minutely responsive).
But another part is owing to the distinctive swagger and strut of the pieces here. I don’t know whether Vivaldi was consciously imitating the French manner in (say) the opening of RV 211; what I do know is they have an irresistible vitality, as well as a kind of grandeur you don't usually associate with Vivaldi. Chandler and his colleagues haven’t quite persuaded me that all the music here hangs together as “French-connected,” but for all that, there’s a common breath of air through this program, a single spirit.