Recording of the Week, A Lifetime of Vivaldi from Théotime Langlois de Swarte

Théotime Langlois de Swarte and Le Consort offer up a double helping of Vivaldi violin concerti this week, tracing the contours of the composer’s life and casually sprinkling in a surprising number of world premiere recordings along the way.

De Swarte - still in his 20s but already an impressively intelligent musician, especially in Baroque repertoire - is at pains to emphasise the ‘vocality’ of the violin in his notes accompanying the album. To this end, he includes three arias among the concerti, allowing him to show off his cantabile tone to great effect. The first, an excerpt from Legrenzi’s opera La divisione del mondo, sets the scene by capturing the style that was in vogue when Vivaldi was born. It’s simultaneously dramatic and lyrical, with an undercurrent of melancholy, and it’s a perfect curtain-raiser. Then, with a flamboyant sense of theatre that reminded me of Und siehe da! from the St Matthew Passion, a brief but thunderous orchestral passage from Vivaldi’s Sinfonia in B minor RV 168 announces the birth (according to legend, in the middle of an earthquake) of the man around whom the album is built.

De Swarte mentions his joy at being able to complete the recorded discography of the Red Priest’s instrumental works exactly one century after the foundation-stone was laid by the great Renée Chemet for HMV, and I’ll admit I was astonished to see so many tracks marked as ‘world premiere recordings’. The mean-spirited might wonder (as classical satirists Throwcase memorably did in respect of Hindemith sonatas - reader discretion advised) whether a recording of RV 250 to plug one of the last gaps really makes that much of a difference to, well, anything - but ironically this concerto is one of the most engaging and exciting on the album and it’s wonderful to be able to hear it on record. Listening to de Swarte and Le Consort putting their elbows into its vigorous, swashbuckling opening Allegro is a particular delight. The Adagio is a limpid affair, but de Swarte declines to wallow in self-pity - instead keeping a sense of fluid movement. This approach to performance makes it easy to hear that connection to vocal music that he is so keen to accentuate.

Two other ‘premieres’ bear mentioning. One is perhaps a little cheeky - the ‘Genoa Version’ of the violin concerto in G minor RV 315 (aka ‘Summer’ from the Four Seasons, for those who haven’t memorised all their Ryom-Verzeichnis numbers) is not fundamentally that different from the later revision that has become so widely-known and beloved. That being said, Vivaldi’s pictorial writing is more pronounced in this version, so listeners who especially relish the drama of the Four Seasons may appreciate de Swarte’s enhanced cuckoo, gnats and bluebottles.

The second, all joking aside, is genuinely significant and special. Whereas the other first recordings on this album might be dismissed as concerti that just weren’t interesting enough for anyone to record before now (though as I hope I’ve made clear, I don’t agree!), the recording of the sonata in B minor RV 37a could hardly have happened any earlier - the work was only rediscovered in 2022, by musicologist and renowned Vivaldi expert Oliver Fourés (whose adaptations and completions pepper the rest of the album). It complements the two-movement RV 37, hitherto believed to be doomed to remain an incomplete fragment forever, and the resulting five-movement sonata has a simplicity and directness - above all in the first movement - that contrasts pleasantly with the often furiously busy textures of some of Vivaldi’s other instrumental works.

If you are already in the ‘Vivaldi wrote the same concerto five hundred times’ camp, then alas I fear this album built around eleven Vivaldi violin concerti may not instantly convert you. Be that as it may, de Swarte’s flexible musicianship, and the thoughtful way in which he’s tailored both his forces and his playing to the evolving career and style of the composer, would make his Vivaldi performances compelling even without the added draw of all those fascinating premieres and rediscoveries. This is a real gem of an album and de Swarte continues to go from strength to strength.