Sometimes music stops you in your tracks. The sound is so beautiful that you forget about the books you should be shelving and you just listen. That was my experience when I heard Fabio Biondi’s recording of Vivaldi’s ‘Farewell Concertos’. Flicking through the new-release classical CDs, I chose this to play in-store, thinking it would be nice background music to relieve my mid-afternoon blues. For many, the thought of Vivaldi conjures images of bad weddings, musicians huddling under marquees, trying to shelter their beloved instruments from the unexpected downpour whilst thundering out the hackneyed strains of The Four Seasons.

However, the music of Antonio Vivaldi is more than a wedding soundtrack, as this recording reaffirms. Vivaldi’s genius lies not only in his ability to readapt one musical idea over many compositions (he penned in excess of 500 concertos), but also in his ability to create tension and drama with small means. Towards the end of his life, facing dire financial need, Vivaldi sold the rights to a number of his compositions to the count Vinciguerra Collalto. His renumeration – 12 Hungarian ducats – was considerably lower than his usual fee, demonstrating his impecuniousness. The catalogue, although incomplete, is a handsome selection of Vivaldi’s most elegant and mature works, performed here with great feeling by Biondi and Europa Galante.

Biondi argues that, in these pieces, Vivaldi’s attention to tempi and textural contrast ‘avoids a uniformity of language which has often been the cause of criticism’. I agree. Listen to the Largo movement of the concerto in C. The ensemble establishes a slow, almost funereal accompaniment, out of which the solo violin rises with a tenderness belying the flippant opening bars of the first movement. Although bright and optimistic, this recording highlights the intelligence and delicacy behind Vivaldi’s lesser-known compositions from a dark period of his life.

Alexandra Mathew