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Press Release
VIVALDI/BACH: L'estro armonico

Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano perform Vivaldi’s first published set of concertos, L'estro armonico, Op. 3 and J.S. Bach’s Six Concertos that pay homage to them on a Two CD Set out on Naïve Classiques March 25
“Concerto Italiano under its founder-director, Rinaldo Alessandrini, has established a fine reputation over the past three decades for its imaginatively conceived performances, and playing of the order heard here fully justifies it. In summary, this is music and playing which deserves unqualified commendation. A dazzling ray of sunshine.” –BBC Music Magazine review of Concerti per violino IX ‘Le nuove vie’ in 2021 
NEW YORK, NY – March 17, 2022 – On March 25, Naïve Classiques will release VIVALDI/BACH, the latest from Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano. The album features keyboard arrangements of Vivaldi’s first published concertos, L’estro armónico, Op. 3, and transcriptions in different instrumental scorings of J.S. Bach’s Six concertos after L’estro armonico by Antonio Vivaldi. Rinaldo Alessandrini conducts and plays solo harpsichord on the program, joined by fellow harpsichordists Andrea Buccarella, Salvatore Carchiolo, and Ignazio Schifani, and organist Lorenzo Ghielmi.  

The Opus 3, published by Vivaldi in 1711, vibrates with a poetic energy taken to the highest level of expressivity, embodied in the subtle and virtuosic exchanges between a string orchestra and four, two, then one solo violins. The stylistic principles developed in each piece were completely new and inspired for the time, the virtuosity intense, and the success considerable, rapidly reaching beyond the frontiers of La Serenissima. Which is how Bach, seven years younger than Vivaldi and drawn to the polyphonic dimension of these “multi-voiced” pieces, adapted several of them for organ and harpsichord. 

Rinaldo Alessandrini alternates original concertos and adaptations in a juxtaposition entirely his own, honoring both composers with the vibrant playing of Concerto Italiano and the four Italian harpsichordists.
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
L’estro armonico Op. 3
 
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Six Concertos After L'estro armonico By Antonio Vivaldi
 
Lorenzo Ghielmi, organ [BWV 593, BWV 596]
Andrea Buccarella, Salvatore Carchiolo, Ignazio Schifani, harpsichords [BWV 1065]
 
Concerto Italiano
Stefano Barneschi, Boris Begelman, Elisa Citterio, Andrea Rognoni, violins
Ettore Belli, Stefano Marcocchi, violas
Marco Frezzato, cello
Luca Cola, double bass
Ugo di Giovanni, theorbo
 
Rinaldo Alessandrini, director and solo harpsichord [BWV 972, BWV 976, BWV 978, BWV 1065]
About Rinaldo Alessandrini

The harpsichordist, organist and pianist Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of the leading figures on the international early music scene. His predilection for the Italian repertory and his constant preoccupation with the expressive characteristics specific to the Italian style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the decisive factors that orientate his musical approach and interpretative options, both at the head of Concerto Italiano, of which he is the founder and director, and as a soloist and guest conductor.
Among the most notable productions he has conducted are Handel’s Theodora, Alessandro Scarlatti’s La Vergine dei dolori, Monteverdi’s Vespers, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and many works by Vivaldi, including La Senna festeggiante, The Four Seasons, the operas L’Olimpiade and Armida, and the monumental reconstruction of his Solemn Vespers for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. Also worthy of mention is his marked penchant for the operas of Monteverdi, Mozart and Handel, which he conducts frequently and with great passion.

A regular guest conductor with leading orchestras in Europe and the United States, but also in Melbourne and São Paulo, he also appears frequently at La Scala in Milan, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Opéra de Liège and Welsh National Opera. In the course of the Monteverdi jubilee year of 2017, he led Concerto Italiano on tour in Australia, China and Japan, and in concerts in Europe and the US.

Rinaldo Alessandrini was resident conductor with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin in the 2015/16 season. In 2016 he was appointed music director of the ‘Purtimiro’ Baroque opera festival at the Teatro Rossini in Lugo di Romagna. His discography, which has earned frequent awards over the past thirty years, largely coincides with that of Concerto Italiano, and features numerous Italian composers but also members of the German school. He records exclusively for naïve.

In 2002, along with Concerto Italiano, he received the Premio Abbiati for his entire career up to that point. He was appointed Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2003, and is a member of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana.
 
About Concerto Italiano

The path taken by Concerto Italiano on its formation by Rinaldo Alessandrini in 1984 intersected with that of the rebirth of early music in Italy. Since that time, exploring notably the works of Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi – three tutelary figures whom it champions all over the world – it has renewed the approach to and interpretation of these early repertories, shedding new light on their aesthetic and rhetorical features. Having initiated many large-scale musical projects and assiduously assembled a large discography over the past three decades, Concerto Italiano has become a frequent visitor to internationally famous concert halls, opera houses and festivals and has produced benchmark versions of its favoured repertory that have enjoyed both public and critical acclaim.

After its long-term immersion in the Monteverdi trilogy staged in collaboration with Robert Wilson at La Scala in Milan and the Opéra de Paris, Concerto Italiano embarked on a number of major concert tours in 2016: Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine in Australia and New Zealand, Alessandro Scarlatti’s Caino in Europe and a programme of late seventeenth-century Roman polyphony with the RIAS Kammerchor. In 2017 it celebrated the 450th anniversary of the birth of Monteverdi with L’Orfeo on tour in China, the Vespers in Japan, L’incoronazione di Poppea at Carnegie Hall and numerous concerts in Europe.
Concerto Italiano was awarded the Premio Abbiati 2002 for its activities, and has also won five Gramophone Awards (in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2004 and 2015), two Grands Prix du Disque, three Deutsche Schallplattenpreise (including L’Orfeo in 2008), the Premio Cini and five Midem Awards. The British musical press has declared that its recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are the finest currently available.  
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A first listen of VIVALDI/BACH can be heard on Naïve’s SoundCloud HERE

Journalists and Program Directors: To audition the recording for review or radio airplay, click here for CD quality and hi-res audio and booklet. For a CD copy of L'estro armonico please contact:
Rebecca Davis
Rebecca Davis Public Relations
Rebecca@rebeccadavispr.com
347-432-8832
Copyright © 2022 Rebecca Davis Public Relations, All rights reserved.


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