VIVALDI Jupiter (Thomas Dunford)

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Thomas Dunford

Genre:

Opera

Label: Alpha

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 78

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: ALPHA550

ALPHA550. VIVALDI Jupiter (Thomas Dunford)

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Farnace, Movement: Gelido in ogni vena (Act 2, scene 6) Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Lea Desandre, Soprano
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Juditha Triumphans, Movement: ~ Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Lea Desandre, Soprano
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Concerto for Bassoon and Strings Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Peter Whelan, Bassoon
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Nisi Dominus, Movement: Cum dederit Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Lea Desandre, Soprano
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Concerto for Cello and Strings Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Bruno Philippe, Cello
Jupiter
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Giustino, Movement: Vedro con mio diletto Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Lea Desandre, Soprano
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Concerto for Lute and Two Violins Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Thomas Dunford, Composer
(L') Olimpiade, Movement: Mentre dormi, Amor fomenti Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Thomas Dunford, Composer
Griselda, Movement: Agitata da due venti Antonio Vivaldi, Composer
Jupiter
Thomas Dunford, Composer
We are the ocean Jupiter, Composer
Jupiter
Lea Desandre, Soprano
Thomas Dunford, Composer

For its mix of irrelevance and pretentiousness (‘music is the homeland of infinite possibility, freedom and sublimated time’), Alpha’s perfunctory booklet note takes some beating. The performances from the Baroque A listers of Jupiter, every one a soloist, deserve better. The overwhelming impression left by this mixed Vivaldi programme is of chamber music delightedly shared among friends. In the three concertos, including the ever-popular one for lute, the players create a spirit of Carnivalesque improvisation. Phrasing and colours are never predictable. Peter Whelan’s dazzlingly agile bassoon is at once clown, acrobat and – in the central Largo – melancholy poet. With his richly coloured tone, cellist Bruno Philippe brings a raw, visceral energy to the cello concerto’s Allegros, egged on by strumming, pounding continuo; and he and lutenist/director Thomas Dunford evoke images of the misty Venetian lagoon in their dreamily floated slow movements.

Lea Desandre, her bright high mezzo flecked with deeper tints, shows comparable style and imagination in a vivid clutch of arias. In ‘Gelido in ogni vena’, from Farnace, she and her lacerating string accomplices suggest a soul traumatised (Farnace is ‘frozen’ with horror at his responsibility for his son’s imagined death, though you won’t deduce that from the booklet). For all her eloquence, Desandre misses a sense of underlying urgency in an aria from Giustino, sung by Emperor Anastasius as he prepares for battle. Conversely, some may find her coloratura, while undeniably exciting, too manically driven in Vagaus’s invocation to the Furies from Juditha triumphans. But Desandre is at her most beguiling in Juditha’s ‘Veni, veni’, partnered by chalumeau-as-turtle-dove, and a tenderly phrased sleep aria from L’Olimpiade. A ‘shipwreck’ solo from Griselda, desperate in the right sense, provides a thrilling Vivaldian finish from singer and players. A pity we have to take the aria’s context, here and elsewhere, on trust.

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