Les Quatre Saisons

Description

For this new recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Jordi Savall conducts an all-female orchestra, as Vivaldi did at the time of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. The soloist Alfia Bakieva is a Tatar-born violinist currently living in Salzburg, Austria. She is a multi-instrumentalist, particularly in the field of folk music, playing the violin, folk vielle, kylkobiz, ghizzhak, and other similar instruments. She studied baroque violin with Enrico Onofri (Conservatorio di Palermo) and Hiro Kurosaki (Mozarteum University), focusing on historically informed performance practices in the repertoires of the Renaissance, baroque, classical, and romantic periods. This profile makes her the ideal candidate for a collaboration with Jordi Savall. She plays on a violin by Francesco Ruggeri, built in 1680 in Cremona, Italy.
This double album sold at the price of a single new release features the recording of the Four Seasons with and without the sonnets written by Vivaldi and four other concertos by Vivaldi. The version with the text read provides particularly revealing insight into the work.