Avital’s Vivaldi
Mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital thrilled audiences with his searing performances when he appeared with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in May last year. If you’re craving your own piece of the action, Avital is soon to release a new CD dedicated to the music of Antonio Vivaldi.
The recording, simply entitled Vivaldi, contains the Concerto in D major RV 93 written for the lute which Avital performed in Sydney on his tour with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Vivaldi contains just one concerto written specifically for the mandolin – the Concerto in C major RV 425. The remaining tracks are innovative and entirely plausible arrangements of concerti originally written for other instruments and transcribed for the mandolin.
There is the Trio Sonata in C major RV 82 written for violin and lute which Avital performs with Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani and lutenist Ophira Zakai, a movement from The Four Seasons:the Concerto in G minor RV 315 ‘Summer’ written for violin, the Largo in e minor from the Concerto in C major RV 443 written for flautino, and in a homage to Venice, the Venetian Gondolier Song La biondina in gondoleta for which Avital teams up with Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez. Avital is accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra.
Avital’s performances with the Venice Baroque Orchestra in New York last week proved a huge success last week as reported in the New York Times.
Recorded in Italy’s Veneto region, this CD will be released in Australia by Deutsches Grammophon on April 3, 2015.
Read our review of Avi Avital with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.
Read our reviews of Avital’s CDs Bach and Between Worlds.
