Not too many composers reach a total of 39 concertos for one instrument, even with two of them unfinished, but that is the number of Vivaldi's bassoon concertos, exceeded only by those for the violin. Such operoseness, resulting in one of the best corpuses of his instrumental music, strongly suggests some specific motivation (an intense love affair with the bassoon seems, with no disrespect to that instrument, unlikely) but we have no idea what it may have been. In his note Michael Talbot finds no solid evidence to suggest that the Pieta boasted anything special by way of a bassoon-playing young lady. The unanswered question is made more tantalizing by Vivaldi's overt understanding of the bassoon's dual character—a double-reed instrument with distinct and 'separable' tenor and bass registers; indeed, one of his bassoon concertos exists in an alternative version for the cello, an instrument that shares this characteristic (RV481 = RV406). This recognition is plain throughout these works and in some passages the bassoon even 'converses' with itself.
The music in this porgramme finds Vivaldi at his most winsome and inventive, Thunemann weaving his usual strands of velvet, and I Musici at their clean-cut best—though the solo cellist's responses in the Andante molto of RV497 are a bit purple-patchy. The balance is excellent and allows the harpsichordist's deft contributions to show through clearly. With pristine recording, and a playing time of 55'55'', this is an issue to enthuse over, raising the total recorded stock of these concertos to 13, ten from Thunemann (though the other four are at present, unavailable).'