How one marvels at the sheer quantity of Antonio Vivaldi's music - more than 500 concertos - as well as the unbridled pleasure the Italian composer must have had writing it.
All this comes across in the latest instalment of Naive's Vivaldi edition, which presents the Orchestra Barocca Zefiro under Alfredo
Bernadini in an album of mixed concertos.
The cover is an eye-catcher: the usual Naive chic, with fashion models strategically draped in vine leaves, in what could be an out-take from Pasolini's Decameron.
Most of the concertos are full band affairs, and brimful of joy, especially when antique clarinets and oboes let loose with a forest of birdcalls on a C major chord.
Among the soloists, Alberto Grazzi is a winner in his A minor bassoon concerto, emerging unscathed from his energetic workout in Antonio's musical gym. A few tracks on, it is difficult to resist putting the player on repeat mode to wallow in the gorgeous duetting of Paolo Grazzi's oboe and Stefano Montanari's violin.
Viktoria Mullova's new Vivaldi recording, playing alongside Il Giardino Armonico, is a mainly all-strings affair. With gut strings and easy elegance, the Russian violinist introduces herself in the Grosso Mogul concerto with some hoe-down fiddling that could take on bluegrasser Byron Berline.
Our expectations are played with. After this lusty Allegro, poetry takes the podium in the second movement when Mullova spins out supple figurations against the delicately duelling accompaniment of archlute and harpsichord.
For the C major concerto, denser sonorities are allowed to linger, while the first movement of I'inquietudine drives all before it, like a musical tsunami.
If you've only ventured into Vivaldi country as far as his Four Seasons, the last movement from Il favorito may surprise you - a minor key take on the haunting Finale from his Autumn concerto.
With every fiddle venerable - the chicken of the group is a 1902 viola - this sound is to be savoured, with a recording that lets us hear every wisp of detail.
Close your eyes, relax, and you might even imagine resin dust floating in the studio air.
* Vivaldi, Concerti per vari strumenti (Naive OP 30409, through Elite Imports)
Vivaldi, Concertos played by Viktoria Mullova (Onys ONYX 4001, through Ode Records)
