It is now 20 years since the Vivaldi scholar, Michael Talbot by chance discovered these 12 violin sonatas in Manchester's Central Music Library. It was an important find not just because the music is by Vivaldi but because it is, for the most part, excellent music. It seems likely that the composer presented the sonatas for violin and continuo to the great Roman patron of the arts, Cardinal Ottoboni during the 1720s. When Ottoboni died in 1740 he was so much in debt that his library of music had to be sold. Some of it, including this collection, was bought by an English traveller, Edward Holdsworth who passed it on to Charles Jennens, librettist of Messiah and other Handel oratorios. Thence, via Heneage Finch, Third Earl of Aylesford and the Handel scholar, Newman Flower, they were eventually bought at auction by the Central Music Library in the mid-1960s.
Just over a year ago I reviewed another recording of Vivaldi's ''Manchester Sonatas'' by the Italian violinist, Fabio Biondi. I enjoyed Biondi's playing which is full of virtuosic gesture and energy. These are strengths which, however, were sometimes achieved at the expense of tonal accuracy, though a more serious problem for my ears was the somewhat hollow, cavernous sound of the recording itself. No such problem exists in the warm, intimate acoustic captured by this second commercially recorded version of the same pieces from Harmonia Mundi. Warmth and intensity are characteristics of the performances, too. The violinist Andrew Manze has an appealing rapport with this music and is expressive in his shaping of phrases. Listen to the alluring opening ''Preludio'' of Sonata No. 6 in A major (RV758) and you will quickly understand what I mean. Manze, like Biondi in the rival set, reveals sensibility towards Vivaldi's pleasing melodic contours. Indeed, this is a quality in which these sonatas abound, not only in the varied Preludes with which each Sonata begins but also in the brisker, sometimes very brisk allemandes and correntes. Both players ornament the music with an effective blend of fantasy and good taste, Biondi perhaps being the more adventurous of the two. Continuo realizations are markedly different between the two sets. Biondi engages a cello and double-bass as well as ringing the changes between harpsichord and organ on the one hand, theorbo and baroque guitar on the other. Manze dispenses with bowed continuo instruments, preferring the lighter textures provided by harpsichord, archlute, theorbo or guitar. I feel no strong preferences either way though Manze's solution does create a greater feeling of intimacy and I like the sharper bite of the plucked strings in the Harmonia Mundi balance. Readers already in possession of Biondi's version should not fret if I say that, offered a choice between the two, I would go for Manze and his Romanesca colleagues Nigel North and John Toll. Both versions brightly illuminate the music but, where precision of musical detail and recorded sound are matters for debate, Manze wins. But let me conclude by reiterating the fact that this is music of great beauty and vitality which will delight most if not all lovers of the late baroque; and it is sympathetically interpreted by both artists. The Fourth, Sixth and Eighth Sonatas make particular appeal to my senses and are pieces that I shall be returning to many times.'