I Solisti Veneti and I Musici must be about equal insofar as the number of their recordings of Vivaldi's concertos are concerned. No other group has recorded more, that much is certain. This set of the composer's 12 Concertos Op. 8 was taped in 1971 and has disappeared and reappeared at intervals since. The Op. 8, in case there are readers who have overlooked the fact, contains the Four Seasons concertos for which there is, apparently an undiminishing market. It also contains two concertos (Nos. 9 and 12) for which Vivaldi suggested an oboe as an optional solo instrument to the violin. There are some recordings which do not take him up on it—the fine set by The English Concert is one of them—yet the writing of the solo part does strongly suggest that Vivaldi had an oboe uppermost in his mind. Claudio Scimone thinks so and has engaged the services of the French oboe virtuoso, Pierre Pierlot. The soloist in the remaining ten concertos is the violinist, Piero Toso.
Toso is a player with an athletic technique, a warm sound and quite a highly developed sense of fantasy. I do not mean this in a pejorative sense but rather that he is not afraid to depart from the text in front of him into realms of fantasy where he feels Vivaldi might have made allowances for it. The slow movement of ''Summer'' offers an instance of this though, somehow, here I did not feel entirely comfortable with his elaboration of the solo line By and large, though, Toso is expressive and more intent on shaping the music than Scimone seems to be in the tuttis. Indeed, from time to time I felt that the orchestra was on autopilot though the playing does frequently spring to life, above all, where there is a descriptive point to be made. But here again Scimone shows a preference for stating the obvious rather than looking further into the music for greater subtlety. Least attractive to my ears are his lengthy, far from clearly defined phrases and his predisposition for giving tempos a tweak when he feels that the status quo is getting monotonous. It works both ways with tempos being made to accelerate and to slow down at whim. And the playing can be breathless, too, as in the opening movement of the Oboe Concerto in D minor, though Pierlot himself executes his line elegantly and fluently.
To sum up: I think both soloists would have been better served by tutti playing that is more responsive and attentive to detail than this. But still, Scimone does give us a good romp through the music and the performances are seldom dull. There is a momentary blemish on the tape at the outset of the Seventh Concerto at the beginning of the second disc. Otherwise, the recorded sound is lively and resonant. Spirited performances, if lacking in expressive subtlety, and containing in the first movement of the Tenth Concerto (La caccia) passages of silly, repetitive keyboard continuo realization.'