Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien & François Lazarevitch - Vivaldi (2017) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

In the course of his recordings for Alpha, François Lazarevitch has explored the music of the Baroque and of oral and popular traditions. After Scottish and Irish music, airs de cour and Baroque suites and sonatas, he stops off in Vivaldi’s Italy. With him, of course, he has his cargo of rare instruments, including the musette de cour (a more sophisticated form of bagpipe) which he uses here to perform Spring from The Four Seasons, in an astonishing and very convincing version transcribed by the great virtuoso wind player of the reign of Louis XV, Nicolas Chédeville.

Lazarevitch himself has arranged the other Seasons for the transverse flute, following a frequent eighteenth-century practice. A new angle on these evergreen masterpieces. As François Lazarevitch says: ‘I want to explore all the early sources in depth in order to challenge my performance practice of today and enrich it with an understanding of the style and the naturalness of period theory and phrasing. When I take tackle old Scottish and Irish music, it is with the aim of retracing this path.’

The rest of the programme is devoted to other favourite pieces by Vivaldi, this time originally written for flute.

"To build this programme I started out from four concertos I’ve played for many years: three of Vivaldi’s Flute Concertos op.10 – La tempesta di mare, La notte and Il gardellino – and also the famous Spring concerto from The Four Seasons in the eighteenth-century arrangement by Nicolas Chédeville for Baroque musette (a small French bagpipe played in art music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). It wasn’t long before I hit on the idea of adapting the other three Seasons for transverse flute. I saw this as a way of telling my own story through these seven concertos devoted to the natural world. I also wanted to offer a different conception of these works, which are so well known to the general public, by giving them new colours and a new profile. I hope my listeners will be attentive not only to the novelty of the scoring and the virtuosity, but above all to the way the music is phrased and articulated with the aim of really telling each of these seven little stories. It’s sheer delight to place oneself at the service of a genius of tone painting like Vivaldi." (François Lazarevitch)

TRACKLIST

Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)

1 Concerto No. 1 in F Major, Op. 10, RV 433 "La Tempesta di Mare ": I. Allegro 02:37
2 Concerto No. 1 in F Major, Op. 10, RV 433 "La Tempesta di Mare ": II. Largo 01:39
3 Concerto No. 1 in F Major, Op. 10, RV 433 "La Tempesta di Mare ": III. Presto 02:04
4 Concerto No. 3 in D Major, Op. 10, RV 428 "Il Gardellino ": I. Allegro 03:49
5 Concerto No. 3 in D Major, Op. 10, RV 428 "Il Gardellino ": II. Cantabile 03:11
6 Concerto No. 3 in D Major, Op. 10, RV 428 "Il Gardellino ": III. Allegro 02:57
7 Concerto No. 1 for Musette, Two Violins and Bass Continuo in C Major, Op. 8, RV 269 "La Primavera": I. Allegro 03:24
8 Concerto No. 1 for Musette, Two Violins and Bass Continuo in C Major, Op. 8, RV 269 "La Primavera": II. Adagio sempre piano 02:24
9 Concerto No. 1 for Musette, Two Violins and Bass Continuo in C Major, Op. 8, RV 269 "La Primavera": III. Pastorello Allegro 03:39
10 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Estate": I. Allegro non molto 04:47
11 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Estate": II. Adagio 02:17
12 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Estate": III. Presto 03:01
13 Concerto No. 3 in F Major, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Autunno": I. Allegro 04:51
14 Concerto No. 3 in F Major, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Autunno": II. Largo 02:10
15 Concerto No. 3 in F Major, Op. 8, RV 315 "L’Autunno": III. Allegro 03:09
16 Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297 "L’Inverno": I. Allegro non molto 03:19
17 Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297 "L’Inverno": II. Largo 01:58
18 Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297 "L’Inverno": III. Allegro 03:20
19 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": I. Largo 01:49
20 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": II. Presto (Fantasmi) 00:47
21 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": III. Largo 01:07
22 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": IV. Presto 00:58
23 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": V. Largo (Il sonno) 01:17
24 Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 10, RV 439 "La Notte": VI. Allegro 01:57

PERSONNEL
Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien
François Lazarevitch, flute, recorder, conductor