Xavier de Maistre - Notte Veneziana (2012)

This is a delightful collection. Xavier de Maistre plays the harp with infinite finesse and much delicacy of colour. He offers four Vivaldi concertos and makes them sound as if they were actually written for the harp, with slow movements particularly enticing.

As he says in his note, ‘the glass-like sounds in Winter from The Four Seasons create an ethereal mood astonishingly reproducing snowflakes and splintering icicles’. The Marcello Concerto, although more robust, is no less winning, especially its gossamer Adagio. The name of Elias Parish Alvars is unfamiliar to me but his grande fantaisie is as captivating on the harp as on the mandolin for which it was written. The Albinoni Adagio is an arrangement of an arrangement but is enhanced by its intimacy. Xavier de Maistre’s own transcription of Giovanni Pescetti’s Sonata also floats by the ear engagingly. To close the programme, Félix Godefroid’s variations on the Carnaval de Venise offer plenty of opportunities for virtuosity but once again the appeal of the performance rests as much on delicate simplicity as extrovert bravura.

Throughout, L’Arte del Mondo, directed by Werner Ehrhardt, provide accompaniments of much finesse and vigour, and the balance (in the Bayer Kulturhaus, Leverkusen) has been expertly managed by the producer, Erich Hofmann. If you enjoy the harp, this CD is very recommendable indeed.