Beautiful!! Deserves more than 5 stars, despite its brevity
A baroque listener | Oklahoma | 06/16/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The 3-star review below is not indicative of this CD. This is simply one of the most beautiful Vivaldi pieces recorded. The editor's review is right-on. As far as the complaint of its brevity -- this is, as the title suggests, Vivaldi's 'complete works for Italian lute.' It's unfair to give this recording a 3-star rating because of it. This CD is absolutely stunning."
What a wonderful recording!
Ivan Weiser | Santa Fe, NM USA | 11/12/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I totally agree with A baroque listener: this recording is stunningly beautiful. I have heard at least six different recordings of the lute (or mandolin or guitar) concerto RV93, including fine ones by John Williams and Angel Romero, and this tops them all, which is saying a LOT. The playing, the sound, and the balance among the instruments, is superlative.
The same for the trio sonatas. I do not feel that the concluding Concerto RV540 is as inspired a piece of music as the others, but it too is played superlatively.
"
Recorded in '84 & '85 !! ...
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 07/26/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"... and it still sounds completely HIP. Jakob Lindberg is as fine a lutenist as any alive today, and if lutenists of the 18th C played better than he does, we've all been cheated by Father Time! But Lindberg is also a scholar of the lute, with a deep knowledge of its historical forms and playing techniques, a knowledge that is absolutely necessary for producing playable scores from Vivaldi's manuscripts. Vivaldi wasn't a lutenist, first of all, and the conventions of score preparation of his era were based on the assumption that instrumentalists knew what to do with vague suggestions and outlines of a given piece of music. Lindberg explains the choices he had to make in the liner notes: the specific sort of lute and how it might have been tuned, the proper octave in which to play the written notes on the treble staff, and the correct amount of doubling of the basso continuo on the lute. However, the casual listener won't be 'fretted' by scholarship; Lindberg plays the music convincingly and gorgeously.
Violinist Nils-Erik Sparf is the scion of a long genealogy of Dalecarian folk fiddlers; he learned that folk tradition of ornamented fiddling from his own father before studying formally in Stockholm and Prague. His remarkable ease with baroque ornamentation seems to my ears to reveal his Dalecarian roots. English-born Monica Huggett was a student of Sigiswald Kuijken, one of the great pioneers of informed baroque performance. Huggett has in turn become a bright star among baroque fiddlers; viola d'amore is patently a side-line, but she acquits herself eleoquently on this CD. "Drottningholm" is Swedish for "Queen's Palace", and in fact the baroque palace and theater of that name have become major attractiosn of a visit to Stockholm. The Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble is as dependably stylish as any chamber orchestra in Europe.
All of the Vivaldi compositions on this CD have survived in North European archives!"
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1
