Vivaldi – Les Quatre Nations (reconstructed)
Ensemble Caprice; Matthias Maute
ATMA ACD2 2879 (atmaclassique.com/en/product/vivaldi-the-four-nations-reconstructed)
At the end of his lifetime Antonio Vivaldi hoped to remedy some financial challenges through the creation of four concertos paying homage to four specific countries – France, England, Spain and the Mughal Empire (present day India). Sadly, the first three of the concertos are lost, but the fourth, titled (Il Gran Mogol) was discovered by a musicologist in Scotland in 2010. Matthias Maute, a composer and also director of the Montreal-based baroque orchestra Ensemble Caprice embarked upon a project to recreate the missing three concertos scoring them for recorder or transverse flute with strings and continuo. The result is this splendid recording on the ATMA label.
In undertaking the new works, Maute explained it was all about giving a voice to one that was silenced by closely adhering to Vivaldi’s musical idiom and respecting the compositional techniques.
His efforts are admirable, and from the beginning, the listener is struck by how successfully he captures Vivaldi’s Venetian style with specific musical elements associated with each nation. Moreover, each concerto is preceded by a short prelude musically connected to the work to follow. As an example, La Francia is preceded by an excerpt from Charpentier’s Mercure Galante while The Duke of Norfolk from The Division Violin by John Playford seems a fitting introduction to L’Inghilterra.
Throughout, Ensemble Caprice delivers a polished and energetic performance while the skilful playing by Maute and Sophie Larivière – each doubling on recorder and flute – melds perfectly with the strings.
While most of the music on this recording is inspired, rather than composed, by Vivaldi, Maute’s finely-crafted scores seamlessly blend with the one existing concerto and together they comprise a cohesive grouping. How could the red-headed priest not have approved?
