Fabrizio Ammetto, L'orfeo Ensemble - Albinoni: Concerti per violino, Co 1-4, Sinfonie a quattro, Si 2-9 (2000)

The art of Italian virtuoso violin playing goes back several centuries, and although soloist Fabrizio Ammetto won’t exactly advance the tradition to any higher level, he certainly seems to be giving his all to these Albinoni concertos, for which the guiding interpretive mode appears to be “molto agitato”. Surely, this isn’t the composer’s intent–just a few crisp allegros and lyrical adagios, cleanly and accurately played, should have done perfectly well. But Ammetto and his L’Orfeo Ensemble try to impress us with tempos that make the bows fly furiously but leave all sense of “ensemble” trampled in the dust. Why play at a speed that not even the soloist/director can comfortably maintain? (The opening of the first Sinfonia in F major should serve as a convincing enough example of what I mean.) Albinoni’s carefully calibrated rhythmic figures, which in the allegros are designed to engage our attention and keep us there–the Sinfonias originally provided the introduction to the composer’s operas–fall into disarray as push comes to shove–literally. There’s no point in going any further with this, except to say that even if the performances were exemplary, they would have been totally ruined by the harsh, overly bright sound that’s made worse by its confined, narrow focus. Unfortunately, there are no other recordings of these “violin concertos and sinfonias without opus number”, but until someone with more polished virtuoso credentials takes them on (Fabio Biondi, perhaps?), I’d let this one languish.