Going Beyond the Seasonal Vivaldi

As regards live performance, Vivaldi is falling into a narrow pit circumscribed by his unspeakably popular “The Four Seasons.”

With this composer there seems to be only overpraise and excess--too much of his work, uncritically exposed to the public, as was the case during the Baroque performance heyday of the 1950s and ‘60s--or neglect, as is becoming the case today, with the one exception noted above.

Using the least of his works as examples, a case can be made for Vivaldi’s repetitiousness, for his resorting to the striding arpeggios and rushing scales that are in fact a feature of his music and no other composer’s.

Thirty years ago, Italian string orchestras took the same handful of Vivaldi concertos around the world, delivering all in the same gliding, edgeless, unornamented manner and representing them as a total picture of the composer.

The variety and inventive intensity of his music were left to the imaginations of (chiefly) British musicians of subsequent decades to realize and disseminate.

In the forefront of Vivaldi performance in the 1970s was Neville Marriner and his then-chamber-proportioned, modern-instrument Academy-of-St. Martin-in-the-Fields (the hyphens have since disappeared), featuring such principals as violinists Iona Brown and Alan Loveday and harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood, who also prepared the performing editions.

Marriner’s lively, driving style produced ear-openingly dramatic readings of Vivaldi’s astoundingly varied Opus 3, the 12 violin concertos collectively titled “L’Estro Armonico” (The Harmonic Rapture).

Long unavailable, the Marriner-Hogwood Opus 3 returns on a pair of CDs (430 557) in London’s mid-priced “Serenata” line: a viable recorded alternative for listeners unable to cotton to the lower-pitched sound of gut-strung violins and clipped phrasings of the period people.

For those into cutting-edge Baroque style, a hearty recommendation for two releases on the Harmonia Mundi label, the more immediately arresting of which (HMC 901366) is a collection employing Swiss violinist Chiara Banchini and her Ensemble 415 (named after the pitch at which they play, the note A sounding at 415 vibrations a second, whereas the modern A is usually 440).

The centerpiece of the program is Vivaldi’s set of variations on the anonymous 15th-Century tune known as “La Follia,” also employed by Corelli and Rachmaninoff.

Vivaldi’s set is performed with thrilling intensity here, Banchini and her colleagues--second violinist Veronique Mejean, cellist Kathi Gohl and harpsichordist Jesper Christensen--slamming into the startling dissonances and jagged rhythms with enormous panache and skill.

The remainder of their program is hardly less interesting: another of the Trio Sonatas of Opus 1 and some edgy, virtuosic sonatas for two violins, designated to be played without continuo.

More familiar territory, Vivaldi’s concertos for recorders--high (sopranino) and mid-range (alto)--is imaginatively explored by the Dutch virtuoso Marion Verbruggen (HMC 907040).

It’s difficult to imagine these keyless, end-blown wooden flutes being capable of as much sound variety as that drawn from them by Verbruggen in such programmatic favorites as “La Notte” and “La Tempesta al Mare.” She is supported by members of Philharmonia Baroque, who play with the dancing lightness characteristic of the work of Nicholas McGegan, who directs from the harpsichord.

Some of the same territory is approached from a different perspective, employing a single-keyed wooden transverse flute (that is, blown from the top, like the modern instrument) alternating with alto recorder. The executants are Michael Schneider (recorder), Karl Kaiser (flute) and fellow members of Camerata Koln (BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77156).

Their playing is fluent and conveys informed scholarship but beside Verbruggen-McGegan sounds rather studied and severe.

An interesting throwback is a collection of Vivaldi’s bassoon concertos played on a modern instrument by Milan Turkovic, also an outstanding performer on period instruments, on which he has recorded the same works.

His companions (on Denon 81757) are I Solisti Italiani, a partial reconstitution of the pioneering Virtuosi di Roma, playing with the honeyed, sensuous tone, slowish tempos and 19th-Century dynamics one remembers from the 1960s.

Turkovic is a stimulating, immensely proficient soloist, whatever the style or instrument imposed on him, notably in the moody concertos in E minor and A minor, which with their lusciously lyrical slow movements--particularly as presented here--support the arguments of those who consider Vivaldi a Romantic precursor.