VIVALDI'S CELLO / EDITION LIMITEE COULEUR CRISTAL TRANSPARENT

Description

Vivaldi's cello gives listeners the chance to hear a different side of Vivaldi. Part of the music in this vinyl box set was written by the composer to showcase the cello of his time, but that's only half the story. Vivaldi's cello pairs these scores with music that Vivaldi originally intended for the violin, the viola d'amore, or the human voice. Music that has now been transcribed for the cello. On this album, Yo-Yo Ma plays the 1712 Stradivarius cello that he had previously modified appropriately for the two recordings Simply Baroque [MOVCL024] he made with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Ma also uses a baroque bow, and he has adopted the relative tuning (in which the instruments are only tuned to each other) employed by the orchestra. The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra plays on period instruments and uses baroque performance practices. Koopman says that Vivaldi's scores have only been slightly modified to give a voice to the cello. "Vivaldi did not write differently for a singer than for the instrumentalist," says Koopman, "I may have changed the ornamentation to make it more instrumental. I also looked for pieces for the lower voices, so I could keep them in the same key. Of course, it was out of the question for this album to ignore what is now Vivaldi's most famous piece. That's how, in a brief nod to the enduring popularity of The Four Seasons, Ma and Koopman play an arrangement of the haunting Largo from the "Winter" Concerto of the work. "In Vivaldi's slow movements, you can play with your heart," explains Koopman. "The music feels at home."