La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler - Venice by Night (2012)

British early music ensemble La Serenissima has presented assortments of Italian Baroque music in a popular "sampler" fashion, with varying degrees of success. This night in Venice makes a good place to start with the group. The concept is not entirely a fanciful one, for even in Vivaldi's day the city of canals had passed the peak of its political power and was beginning to be seen as a repository of culture and a tourist destination. Conductor Adrian Chandler offers a possible collection of music that a visitor might have heard on a series of occasions: "arriving by gondola," at "a private concert," twice more on a "journey by gondola," at "music for Compline," at a "serenata," at "a concert from the Ospedale della Pietà" (the girls' school where Vivaldi was music master), and "at the opera house." The result is a more varied program of Venetian music of the early 18th century than is generally available, ranging from the anonymous gondolier songs to virtuoso concertos by Vivaldi and Veracini, to a sacred aria by Antonio Lotti (who not so long ago was the only known composer of the bunch and is now all but ignored), to operatic selections. These last may be the highlights, thanks to the easily graceful voice of soprano Mhairi Lawson; the orchestra itself tends toward a sweet, homogeneous sound that has fallen a bit out of fashion for Vivaldi and his contemporaries. But this is a worthwhile collection of Italian Baroque music for the curious general listener.