Sandrine Piau, Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina - Vivaldi: In furore, Laudate pueri e concerti sacri (2006)

The monumental Vivaldi series on France's Naïve label rolls on with this gorgeous disc of somber sacred music, some of it instrumental. Part of the attraction of this series, based on a collection of Vivaldi manuscripts held at the University of Turin, is that so much of the music is unknown; the listener has the experience of seeing new masterworks unfurled at every turn. Consider the "Tunc meus fletus" aria from the opening solo motet (really more of a solo cantata) In furore iustissimae irae, RV 626, rendered here with truly tortured intensity by the dazzling French soprano Sandrine Piau. There is nothing in the whole corpus of Bach to correspond to this aria, which speaks not of faith but of an embrace of sorrow. Piau is equally effective in the brutally difficult short movements of the Laudate pueri, RV 601, and she makes it seem more than likely that Vivaldi, conducting his group of virtuosa but moderate-voiced young singers at the Ospedale della Pietà teenage girls' orphanage, would have had in mind a voice quite a bit like hers if possibly a bit less strikingly and effortlessly smooth. The listener hears as well a new side of Italian conductor Ottavio Dantone and his Accademia Bizantina orchestra here. Dantone generally tends to push Vivaldi to the edge, with slashing attacks and vigorous dynamic contrasts. Here he tones everything down and wraps the orchestra around Piau's lines, yet without losing any sense of immediacy and engagement with the music. The opening of the Adagio molto movement of the Sinfonia "Al Santo Sepolcro," RV 169, is hushed and drawn out just about as far as possible, and all the instrumental music, intended for church use, has a luminous reverence. But there is still room for the fiery Dantone when the mood calls for it, as in the opening aria of In furore iustissimae irae (In the fury of your most righteous anger). Naïve is doing nothing less than redefining the whole realm of Vivaldi performance with this series of authentic-instrument discs, and this one is if possible even better than the others released thus far.