Customer Reviews

Flute Concertos

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I've had this recording since 1988 (this is a re-release) and I adored it then and I adore it now. Janet See's original flute is vivid and present. The orchestration works beautifully.

This disk was recommended to me back in 1992 as one of the best classical recordings ever made, period. I haven't really listened to enough to know whether such high praise is truly merited or not, but over the past ten years it has become my all-time favorite. A definite must for lovers of Vivaldi, aficionados of baroque, and people equipped with ears.

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741): Flute Concertos RV 427, 438, 440, 533, 428, 436 and 429. Performed by Janet See and Stephen Schultz, baroque transverse flute, Elizabeth Le Guin, violoncello, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco (concertmaster: Michael Sand), directed from the harpsichord by Nicholas McGegan.

Recorded in March, 1987, at Lone Mountain College Chapel, San Francisco, California.

Harmonia Mundi. Originally issued in 1988 as HMC 905193, now available as part of a 2-CD set HMX 2907340.41 which includes Vivaldi recorder concertos played by Marion Verbruggen and the same orchestra (ASIN: B0000665Z7).

I can only confirm what others before me have written: This must surely be one of the finest Vivaldi recordings of all time! Both the playing and the recording technique (it sounds suspiciously as though Harmonia Mundi was still using analogue equipment in 1987 because there is some slight "pre-echoing" to be heard) are absolutely magnificent. In particular, Janet See's delightful and highly musical formation of the flute solo lines on her mellow, woody baroque instrument is a treat for the ears, but it shouldn't prevent one from enjoying the full-blooded, energetic orchestral sound that Nicholas McGegan coaxes from his West Coast original instrument orchestra as though this music had been written specially for them. Incidentally, all the pieces here were written by Vivaldi with the transverse flute in mind, and I found it particularly pleasant to hear them played as they were intended on not on some form of recorder .(The "birdsong" Gardellino concerto does actually exist in another version for recorder.) Full marks to all involved here: I am writing 19 years after the recording was made, but I have yet to discover a disc of this material that could outdo the San Francisco offering.