Composer vivaldi2/17/2023 Countless violinists have recorded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, not to mention the many arrangements of the pieces for other instruments. The first four concertos of this collection form what has become one of the most widely spread classical compositions in the history of music: Le Quattro Stagioni. Fourteen years later another collection of concertos – Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (‘The Contest of Harmony and Invention’) – would secure Vivaldi’s reputation for eternity. Vivaldi’s set – represented here by the Concerto in B minor, RV 580 and Violin Concerto in A minor, RV 356 – established a vogue for a virtuosic and brilliant type of writing, with fast movements characterized as much by their propulsive basses as by conventional melodiousness and with central slow movements often exuding a mesmeric, almost ghostly calm. Scored for one, two, or four violin soloists, the twelve concertos in the set fuelled a burgeoning fashion for new Italian music in northern Europe, and were soon being avidly performed and enjoyed in major musical centres, inspiring younger composers including Bach, Handel and Telemann. “With fabulous performances and BIS’s state of the art recording I would say it has to be one of the top choices in a fiercely competitive market.” “What you do get is all the excitement and spontaneity of a live performance… an utterly unified aesthetic which admits of the wildest fantasy.” Gramophoneġ711 saw the publication of what was to become one of the most important musical collections of the first half of the 18th century: Antonio Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (‘The Harmonic Fancy’).
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