Avie Records: Vivaldi — The French Connection 2 | La Serenissima, Adrian Chandler (Audio CD)

Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!

Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD
• Brand / Label: Avie Records
• Composer: Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
• Ensemble: La Serenissima
• Director / Violin: Adrian Chandler
• Flute: Katy Bircher
• Oboe: Gail Hennessy
• Bassoon: Peter Whelan
• Release Year: 2011
• Genre: Classical
• Style: Baroque, Period Performance
• Catalog Number: AV 2218
• UPC / Barcode: 822252221824
• Condition: New / Factory Sealed

Product Features

• Format: CD (DDD)
• Discs: 1
• Total tracks: 30
• Total runtime: 79 minutes 03 seconds
• Performance: Period instruments
• Booklet: Enclosed — English, German, French
• Contains 2 world premiere recordings (marked *)
• Manufactured and printed in: UK
• Packaging: Standard jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped
• Supported by: University of Southampton, Istituto di Cultura Edimburgo

Overview

The "French Connection" series tracks a specific and underexplored chapter in Vivaldi's biography: the concertos that ended up in French collections, many of them surviving only in Parisian archives rather than the Venetian sources usually mined for Vivaldi recordings. Volume 2 continues where the first disc left off, and the programme is genuinely varied — nine concertos across thirty tracks, featuring flute, oboe, violin, and bassoon as soloists, often in combination.

Two of the works here are world premiere recordings. The Concerto Il Gran Mogol (RV 431a) — a newly discovered flute concerto — gets its first performance on disc, and the Concerto for violin, strings and continuo in B♭, RV 365, follows. Both justify the disc's existence on their own, but the surrounding repertoire holds its own. The Concerto Intitolato La Notte (RV 104), for flute, two violins, bassoon, and continuo, is one of Vivaldi's most atmospheric chamber works, and the three "Paris" concertos from the collection show a composer at ease with clean, elegant string writing.

La Serenissima under Adrian Chandler plays all of it with an easy fluency and rhythmic vitality that keeps the music moving without sacrificing clarity or detail. Katy Bircher's flute is particularly well-suited to the Venetian baroque idiom — light, transparent, and precise. Peter Whelan's bassoon in RV 473 brings a warmth to an instrument that baroque repertoire often treats more percussively.

For collectors of Vivaldi on period instruments, or anyone curious about what was reaching French aristocratic libraries from Venice in the early 18th century, this is a well-executed and genuinely illuminating release.

Interesting Facts

• The "French Connection" concept stems from the discovery that significant numbers of Vivaldi manuscripts were preserved in French aristocratic and institutional collections rather than in Italian archives — many were lost in Venice but survived in Paris.
• La Serenissima, founded by Adrian Chandler in 1994, specialises exclusively in Venetian baroque repertoire and has built one of the most extensive catalogues of Vivaldi recordings of any ensemble working today.
• The Concerto Il Gran Mogol, RV 431a, receives its world premiere recording here — "Il Gran Mogol" (The Great Mughal) is a title Vivaldi apparently used to evoke an exotic, distant East, though the music itself is characteristically Venetian in style.
• The Concerto Intitolato La Notte (RV 104) is one of a group of Vivaldi concertos with programmatic titles suggesting darkness, ghosts, and sleep — companion pieces to the better-known La Notte flute concertos, Op. 10.
• The "Paris" concertos referenced in this programme are part of a large collection of Vivaldi manuscripts held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, amassed largely through the efforts of French collectors in the early 18th century.
• Peter Whelan, the bassoonist on this recording, is one of the leading period-instrument bassoon players of his generation and has gone on to found his own baroque ensemble, Ensemble Marsyas.

Track Listing

1–3. 'Paris' Concerto No. 2 for strings & continuo in E minor, RV 133 — 6:16 4–7. Concerto for violin, oboe, strings & continuo in F, RV 543 — 7:37 8–10. Concerto for flute, strings & continuo in A minor, RV 440 — 8:58 11–13. Concerto for bassoon, strings & continuo in C, RV 473 — 15:36 14–16. Concerto Il Gran Mogol for flute, strings & continuo in D minor, RV 431a — 7:59 17–19. 'Paris' Concerto No. 11 for strings & continuo in G, RV 150 — 4:21 20–24. Concerto Intitolato La Notte for flute, 2 violins, bassoon & continuo in G minor, RV 104 — 9:33 25–27. 'Paris' Concerto No. 8 for strings & continuo in D minor, RV 127 — 4:16 28–30. Concerto for violin, strings & continuo in B♭, RV 365 — 13:08

\ World premiere recordings*

Publishers

© 2011 Adrian Chandler. Marketed by Avie Records. Manufactured and printed in the UK. LC 11982.

Something to say about these discoveries? A short note helps other Vivaldi enthusiasts find the disc.