Unless you can peek at the note, there’s nothing on the cover of this recording to indicate that this is the ‘second’ Vivaldi Gloria – unless you happen to know that RV588 is not the more famous RV589. While such a marketing policy can surreptitiously introduce new audiences to a work of near-equal merit to the ubiquitous ‘standard’ version, this is a dubious practice. Nevertheless, the recording (which has taken over five years to come out) brims with the freshness and infectious energy of Philip Pickett at his most persuasive.
For all the noticeable parallels that exist between the two Gloria s, both composed probably between 1713-19, there are distinctive moments including a harmonically subtle ‘Et in terra pax’ and a ‘Domine Deus’ whose oboe solo owes much to Albinoni’s easy style. Both of Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus settings (both almost certainly composed for the famous Pieta orphanage) are every bit as significant. Here we have the one discovered in Prague in the late 1960s for single five-part choir and orchestra, a work which glistens with punchy chorus work, theatrical gesture – such as Christopher Robson’s operatic ‘Judicabit’ complete with last trump – and succinct solo sections which make considerable demands, if momentarily, on the agile Catherine Bott; when in tandem, both sopranos relish the succulent duet ‘Tecum virtutis’, with its complementary duetting from a pair of cellos.
Such innovative palettes are colourfully performed by the New London Consort in both these major choral works, not least in the final fugues (the Gloria uses the same material as its namesake, with some interesting variants). The last section of Dixit is especially grandly arched, texturally embedded in Vivaldi’s rising inverted sequences and including a ravishing pedal conclusion which not even the fine account under Robert King captures with such radiant majesty. Pickett is acutely aware of Vivaldi’s luminous treatment of words and the means of enhancing musical imagery, so fastidiously crafted by the composer. The tutti sound is immediate, perhaps a little upfront at times, and yet appropriately resonant in the solos. The solo singing is not generally as consistent as for King.
Vivaldi’s solo ‘Introduzioni’ are enticing tasters (such as the two more contemplative pieces which Vivaldi wrote to precede the Miserere), though the more extrovert nature of the Dixit and Gloria Introductions lead here, respectively, to Catherine Bott struggling to find her usual focus and Christopher Robson too unyieldingly projected. However, still an unequivocal and robust new Vivaldi offering