Customer Reviews

Baroque in Italy

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I found this cd at Virgin about 2 years ago when I was first compiling a Classical music collection. After buying (usually at bargain prices) over 400 Classical discs, this Sony release remains one of my favorite Baroque anthologies.

When I used to think about Baroque music, the first (and usually only) names that immediately came to mind were Vivaldi and Bach (and maybe Handel if I had a moment to think about it). This disc opened my eyes (and ears) to composer that up until I purchased this disc I had never knew existed. T. Albinoni's piece is wonderful and catchy; Geminiani's concerto grosso is graceful; Pietro Locatelli's concerto is dynamic and vibrant; Scarlatti's concerto for oboe and string exciting; and of course Vivaldi's pieces are predictably fun and engaging.

I simply adore this disc, and listen to it at least once a month. Although originally recorded in 1974, Sony has done a great job remastering these analog recordings. The remastering is so good that I can't even hear any background noise whatsoever (it's practically as clear as a DDD issue). If you ever come accross this disc (either used or cut-out), don't be afraid to purchase it. It offers some great music by lesser known but wonderfully talented Baroque composers, and hopefully it will inspire you to seek out other works by these same artists.

According to the Wikipedia, 'The popularity and success of the "Baroque" was encouraged by the Catholic Church when it decided that the drama of the Baroque artists' style could communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement.' This holds true for Baroque music, by and large. The Baroque period is roughly 1600-1750, after the Renaissance and before the age of Classical music.

Baroque music often uses Renaissance features such as polyphony and counterpoint. However, it goes far beyond this predecessor, adding elements such as ornamentation, greater orchestration, less reliance on a capella singing, stronger dominant melody lines, and perhaps the two greatest innovations to come down to modern times - a great concern for documentation (scoring, particularly for individual instruments) and a solidification of the Western tonal scales, major and minor. This makes Baroque music 'seem more like regular music' to the typical Western listener today than Renaissance and earlier music would seem.

This disc is a compilation of pieces released on vinyl by Sony in the 1970s. It has a cross-section of the Italian Baroque composers - the Baroque age is generally considered to have been born in Italy. Vivaldi is the towering figure in this group, but other composers such as Albinoni, Marcello, Geminiani, Locatelli, and Scarlatti also rose to prominence. Many of the pieces contained here may sound familiar to the average listener even as the composers are not as well known.

Each piece on this disc is a concerto. Concertos in this sense have a primary orchestra and a smaller group of soloists or single solo - this is a Baroque innovation that would transform into the more familiar Classical concerto in the next music period. Four of the concerti here have the oboe as the counter instrument, while one uses violins as the primary musical foil.

The performers here are Le Florilegium Musicum de Paris and I Solisti Veneti, under the direction of Claudio Scimone. Known in Europe, some of these recordings were not previously released in North America until the transition to CD was made. The performances here are solid and well crafted, if not particularly well known. This is an example of the many musical talents in Europe that have long been underappreciated in American circles. The Sony transfer from analog to CD format has been expertly done.

This is great and imminently affordable collection of this wonderful music, deserving of a place in any music library.

I do most of my listening to recorded music with headphones, a high quality vacuum tube headphone amplifier, an added separate vacuum tube based DAC, a turntable system if vinyl LP, and a high quality vacuum tube preamplifier. Having acquired this beautiful playback system over the years, it is all the more musically satisfying to listen through when the cd is as high quality as this one of Italian Baroque concerti. From the onset, this recording presents the individual instruments distinctly, yet cohesively, to bring them all together to make beautiful music. The two orchestras are wonderful and showcase European orchestral professionalism for American's to enjoy. This is both entertaining and educational, as some of these composers are not often presented in this country and if interested to do so, one can investigate additional titles of these composers.

So, an excellent find for lovers of early classical music and for the listener who has invested a good deal of money and taken a good deal of time to study and pick out a playback system of his/her own choosing, tailored for his/her's ears alone. JM

When most people think of Italian baroque music they think of Vivaldi. A few others may remember to add Albinoni to the list as a result of the unprecendented popularity of his adagio for organ and strings in tear jerker films like Gallipoli an others. few will remeber any of the ither great composers if the Italian Baroque. This CD is an excellent way to refresh the memory and become familiar with some excellent music which is no less beautiful than Vivaldi. Indeed, the during the period from 1650-1750 Itlay priduced a number of composers that helped shape the baroque musical repertiote and standards. The fact that the violin was perfected in Cremona and Verona and the piano was invented in Italy contributed to this phenomenon. This CD features music from Vivaldi's contemporarires, Gemniniani, Marcello, Albinoni and Locatelli. Their concertos are distinctly beautiful. Locatelli emerges as ine of the finest writers for the violin that ever was and Marcello does for the oboe what Beethoven much later would do for the piano. This CD can serve as a door to other musical discoveries. So, after you've listened to these excerpts go and look for individual collections.