Search - Antonio Vivaldi, Andrew Parrott, Taverner Consort Players :: Vivaldi: Gloria & Magnificat / Parrot

Vivaldi was well known as, among other things, the music director of the famous all-girl orchestra of the Ospedale della Pietà orphanage in Venice, for which he wrote many of his most famous sacred works, including the Gloria. Andrew Parrott is the first to try recording these works with an all-female cast (well, singers, anyway). He handles the published SATB scoring by simply transposing the tenor and bass parts up an octave--the resulting chords are occasionally surprising but always persuasive. The Magnificat and the short Psalm settings are less familiar but equally convincing. Parrott includes some beautifully sung plainchant; the Taverner Players make the Sonatas (is "sublime" too strong a word for Vivaldi?) exquisite. --Matthew Westphal