Customer Reviews

Vivaldi - Gloria · Magnificat / Concerto Italiano · Rinaldo Alessandrini [+ Bonus CD · Catalogue 2000]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This Gloria is the same as Amazon recommend as an essential on that special page but it has another front, is cheaper in price (a bargain) and an extra disc too (at least my copy has an extra disc).

Gloria starts VERY fast but Allesandrini give us a very special Gloria with great singing (and he slow it down after a while... tempi is probably something you find veryy odd, special but he seems to give us a new great dimension of this work AND it works). This must be one of the best Gloria versions out there.

Magnificat was a big surprise for me never heard before and it is gorgeous, splendid performed.

Sound and overall quality is superb. This was my first Opus 111 set (record company) and I am more than satisfied.

I'll keep this short. I love classical music, love Baroque, and have great admiration for Alessandrini and the Concerto Italiano. He has made some wonderful Vivaldi recordings available on both Naive and Brilliant Classics, as well as other small European labels. Those things aren't in question here.

The Sound: The engineering in flawless. Close, with just the right amount of reverb, and equalized to perfection.

Th Performance. To my ears, he takes things way too fast or way too slow, driving twenty thousand leagues beneath any emotional connection to the underlying reason for the music - whatsoever. The faster pieces, like the Domine Fili Unigenite, are so fast you'd think your CD player was skipping if it weren't for the "pop" and "clicks" that usually accompany that annoying phenomenon. In the Laudumus Te, tempo so slow the soloists gasping for air and breathing in places loudly enough to sound like they are being pressed to death.

The Magnificat isn't quite as bad, but I honestly have never wanted to slap a conductor in the face for senseless self indulgence until now. At the price your going to pay for this used, attempt to listen to this somewhere on the web before you get your credit card out. If he were trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, that would be something else entirely. What's next? A four minute "Messiah?"

i am 19 years old and i usually don't buy classical music but i have wanted lately to get into some classical music. so i ask our classical guy at my work for a good CD that had vocals on it. and he gave me this CD. and i was blown away with what i heard. the vocals go so well with the music that it is hard for me to stop the CD. this is truly a great piece of work. a good buy and it is only $8.