There's a real lickety-split opening to this colourful disc of Vivaldi concertos: the violin concerto L'inquietudine, not one of its composer's best-known, really earns its title with a restlessly virtuosic solo part, dispatched with taut, nervous energy by Fabio Biondi. In truth there's some scintillating music here, as well as performances which mix suitable inspiration with scrupulous but unfussy attention to detail.
The nearest we get to well-trodden ground here are the vigorous La tempesta di mare and the fantastical La notte (played here in their later 'flute' revisions, but on recorder), and both are performed with tightly controlled virtuosity, and with plenty of surprises – the giant off-beat accents in both concertos' finales, for instance. Elsewhere we get a creamy account of the charming (but perhaps slightly long) Concerto per eco in lontano, a encourage mixed programming so refreshingly different from the Vivaldian norm? It may not always bring us the Red Priest at his most inspired but it certainly shows a few sides to him that we do not always see – enough to confound daft comments about his lack of variety. For this is music brimming with ideas, from the unusual accompanimental texture of the slow movement of RV561, to the E-string-less experiment of RV243 (and the strange, off-beam harmonies of its slow movement), to RV134's excellent fugue.
All are played with La Serenissima's customary bright energy and enthusiasm, to which qualities are here added considerable subtlety of detail: listen to the way Chandler picks his way intelligently through the changing textural landscape strong-boned concerto for two violins, and an exquisite, muted-string Christmas concerto entitled Il riposo. If the sombre Concerto funèbre for multiple soloists is a slight disappointment, it's only because Concerto Italiano (for Erato) have recently taken it to another level of dark theatricality. Overall, though, this is another disc to add to the growing pile of wonderfully refreshing and enlightening Vivaldi recordings to have come out of Italy in recent years.