Vivaldi Editions, your opinions?

[wnewport]

While browsing through the classical music on Amazon I always run across the Vivaldi Edition cd's with the consistant outline of a nice looking girl with cool colors and the title bar across the bottom. It makes me want to collect all of them...

But I don't know how they compare to other recordings. The Vespri per I'Assunzione di Maria Vergine sounded good, and I plan on buying it.

I'm just curious if these are considered good or not.

 

[zumaro]

The cover art is striking of this edition (although I must be getting old as I don't find most of the covers that attractive - just severe), but the music is what counts and luckily the performances are top rate. I have the Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine and Orlando Furioso (not bought for the covers) and it would be hard to better them. This is probably the Vivaldi edition to keep the closest eye on right now - energetic and stylish.

 

[DarkAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wnewport While browsing through the classical music on Amazon I always run across the Vivaldi Edition cd's with the consistant outline of a nice looking girl with cool colors and the title bar across the bottom. It makes me want to collect all of them... But I don't know how they compare to other recordings. The Vespri per I'Assunzione di Maria Vergine sounded good, and I plan on buying it. I'm just curious if these are considered good or not.

Impossible to make blanket statement about all performances, but most of the Naive/Opus III label recordings are excellent and the sound quality is outstanding across the board. They have a great group of young conductors and performers recording for the label.

The reason you are seeing the flood of new/lesser known Vivaldi works is the Vivaldi collection at National Library in Turin Italy, government bought many private manuscript collections for museum and researchers have slowly discovered a staggering number of additional opera/religious works (I believe reading somewhere 30-40 operas discovered) composed by Vivaldi in addition to his massive catalog of orchestral compositions currently available, the prolific output of Vivaldi is truely amazing.

There is a show on Ovation channel where Cecelia Bartolli visits the Vivaldi center to research her recent recording of Vivaldi works, discusses the difficulty of any modern singer attempting the vocal ranges involved since during Vivaldi's time they were written for castratti.

 

[wnewport]

Thank you for the replies, that is exactly what I needed to know.

 

[FalconP]

The "Vivaldi Star" in the Opus 111 label is the conductor Fabio Biondi. His concertos are near-definitive.

 

[TMHBAT]

There is some really excellent recordings in this series. In addition to the Vespri, note L'Olimpiade (OP30316), Concerti per vari strumenti (OP30409), and Concerti per archi (OP30377). Also note the fantastic Gloria/etc. (OP30195/OPS1951), although I don't believe this is technically part of the "Edition."

 

[Masolino]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FalconP The "Vivaldi Star" in the Opus 111 label is the conductor Fabio Biondi. His concertos are near-definitive.

Biondi has since moved to the Virgin Verita label, and have a
couple of Vivaldi (multi-instrument concertos) albums out
recently.