Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi - Vivaldi - Concerti per viola d'amore (2007)

The revival of the viola d'amore as an instrument distinct and separate from the viola is a well-established phenomenon, advanced by composers and performers alike at least since the 1920s. That doesn't mean, however, that there are a great many players of the viola d'amore around, nor are there nearly as many viola d'amores in existence to play, at least in a quantity relative to the number of violas that are out there. It is certainly an odd duck instrument; it has six or seven strings and a rank of sympathetic strings that vibrate along with the player, it puts out rich harmonics and has a mellow, somewhat nasal sound. Although it has earned a considerable number of nods from twentieth-century composers, its historical repertory is relatively small; Attilio Ariosti remains the all-time champion among Baroque composers for the viola d'amore, having written 21 sonatas for the instrument. Next in line is Antonio Vivaldi, with eight concertos and four arias with viola d'amore used in a concertante format. This Virgin Classics disc, Vivaldi: Concerto per Viola D'amore contains all of these concerti, of which the last is a double concerto for viola d'amore and lute, and these are performed by the group that probably constituted the state of the art in Vivaldi interpretation in 2007, Fabio Biondi's Europa Galante.

Biondi elects to perform the solos himself in these recordings, and he is obviously responsive to both Vivaldi's idiom, with its driving, extroverted allegros and mysterious, sparse adagio movements, and to Vivaldi's way with the instrument. Biondi clearly seems to relish Vivaldi's sometimes outrageously virtuosic requirements, such as leaping from the outer edges of the instrument into the center of its range as in the concluding Allegro of the Concerto in A major, RV 396. Passages that require a driving, strumming sound, such as in the outer movements of the Concerto in D major, RV 392, are always wonderfully done by Europa Galante; these sections almost "rock," and Virgin's close and absolutely clear recording is a great bonus. Virgin's engineers seem to "engineer" Europa Galante in the proper sense of a recording rather than setting up in a cathedral and then maintaining a patrician attitude about the ambient sound carrying the music onto the recording -- instruments come into the foreground and go and ensemble passages are rich and full. The most often recorded, and therefore most familiar, work featured here is the Concerto for viola d'amore and lute, RV 540, known mainly owing to its prominent lute part and, at one remove, as a potential guitar concerto. Europa Galante plays it very well, but what is striking about Vivaldi: Concerto per Viola D'amore is not that so much as how wonderfully vivid and intense the other concerti are; Vivaldi obviously took the viola d'amore very seriously and his concertos for it are consistently dynamic and exciting. As far as a complete collection of Vivaldi's viola d'amore concertos go, it's hard to imagine there would be a better one than this, though to be fair Catherine Mackintosh has recorded them for Hyperion. Biondi, though, is the way to go.