Ensemble Zefiro is one of the most remarkable Baroque bands to emerge during the last decade or so, though we hear of it less often than it deserves. Its specialised front line is its battery of exceptionally gifted wind players, but the support troops of strings and continuo are no less worthy of commendation. In all technical and musical respects they think, breathe and act as one. Their dynamic range (from sotto voce whisper to as many fs as you regard as adding up to 'issimo') is put to vivid and impressive use, whether terraced in crescendos or diminuendos, or in the finely judged squeezing of notes.
The Allegros are crisp, animated, joyously propulsive and full of Italian sunshine, and the eloquent music-making of the oboe and bassoon soloists effortlessly conceals Vivaldi's severe technical demands. It's perhaps the slow movements that make the deepest impression: how many times have we heard the same harmonic progressions but marvelled at Vivaldi's ability to invest them with constantly new charm and depth? There are appealing conversations in those of RV545 (oboe and bassoon), RV535 (two oboes), RV557 (two recorders, whose players aren't among the declared personnel in the booklet!) and RV538 (two cellos).
They are all marked by stylish embellishment, and the last was an irresistible reminder of the benchmark recording of the two-cello Concerto RV531 by Pleeth and Bylsma with the AAM (L'Oiseau Lyre). Nicholas Anderson has rightly described Alberto Grazzi as 'the poet of the bassoon'; in this recording we have a veritable eisteddfod. This is a faultless and marvellous recording.