Vivaldi: La Cetra - Huggett, Raglan Baroque Players, Kraemer

Antonio Vivaldi
La Cetra - 12 Concertos Op.9
Monica Huggett, Raglan Baroque Players, Nicholas Kraemer
Virgin 5 61594 2

Monica Huggett’s Vivaldi recordings with Nicholas Kraemer’s Raglan Baroque Players are always a great pleasure to listen to. The “Four Seasons” recording (coupled with other concertos from Vivaldi’s opus 8) is, in my opinion, one of the best available today. The complete recording of Vivaldi’s opus 9 violin concertos, known as “La Cetra”, is also eminently worth hearing, although Vivaldi was here possibly not quite so inspired as with his previous work: for the non-expert, it is certainly not easy to keep the twelve concertos separated in one’s mind, and despite some strong movements the whole does have a certain “same-ishness” about it, each concerto consisting of three movements in the typical fast – slow – fast pattern common in 18th century Venice (only the fifth concerto has a slow introduction). Not only is Monica Huggett’s violin-playing a real revelation, the basso continuo is equally brilliant with, amongst other things, some marvellous theorbo accompaniments. Unfortunately, the Virgin Veritas re-release offers no information whatsoever on the names of the musicians or the instruments, and the accompanying text on Vivaldi’s music is far too short to be anything but a brief introduction. The recording was made in 1986 at St. Giles’ Church in London’s Cripplegate, originally for a company called Shogun Music (and later released on licence to EMI and Virgin). There is some background tape noise which can be a little annoying when listening via headphones, but in general the sound quality is more than adequate and provides almost two hours of baroque amusement in its purest form.

Leslie Richford, Amazon Customer