Paolo Grazia, Roberto Valeriani, Ensemble Respighi - Vivaldi: Concerti per oboe, 2 oboi, archi e continuo (2012)

Vivaldi wrote a large number of oboe concertos, perhaps 20 depending on various disputes over authenticity and whether to count concertos in which the oboe is part of a larger concertino group. The cutoff point for the latter group is not clear, which is one of the things that makes these pieces interesting. It's not as large a group as the 37 bassoon concertos, but the oboe concertos seem to have arisen at various points in Vivaldi's career, and it's worth putting a group of them together on a release like the present one from Italy's Tactus label. Common to most of them is a high level of virtuosity, in terms of both finger dexterity and breath control; annotator Giovanni Tasso writes despairingly of "phrases requiring the performers to execute interminable passages while practically holding their breath." The treatment of the solo instrument is subtle and unusual, by no means restricted to a strict opposition of oboe and strings, and Vivaldi indicated the ambiguity with a written reference in the manuscripts for the works for two oboes and orchestra here to concertos "with oboe" rather than "for oboe." This aspect of the music could have been more sharply delineated, however, than it is here. The small, one-instrument-per-part Ensemble Respighi plays competently but doesn't put much emphasis on the tutti passages where there is a dramatic opposition of soloists and orchestra, as in the final movement of the Concerto in C major for two oboes, strings, and continuo, RV 534. There is a general lack of the strong affect favored by other contemporary Italian performers, with the result that the concluding Concerto in D minor for two oboes, strings, and continuo, RV 535, which contains lovely examples of the varied and evocative deployment of the solo instruments, seems insufficently powered expressively for the operatic melancholy of the work. Oboist Paolo Grazia, however, is equal to the technical demands of the music. The general listener can find stronger recordings of Vivaldi's wind concertos (the Naxos bassoon concerto set is worth considering), but this disc is useful to compilers of large Vivaldi collections.