Fabio Biondi needed a certain amount of audacity or temerity to risk a new version of the Quattro Stagioni, less than ten years after his historic version for Opus 111. That recording of The Four Seasons, in 1991, dazzlingly launched the career of one of the most talented Italian violinists and has not aged a bit, despite repeated challenges by some equally renowned rivals such as Giardino Armonico, Sonatori della Gioisa and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. The eternal youth of that version is as incandescent as it is provocative.

Yet he has risked recording, with the same enthusiasm, the eight concertos that make up the Cimento dell' Armonie e dell'Inventione cycle. The result is all the more remarkable in that the leader of Europa Galante proposes in this second reading, based on the Manchester manuscripts, an even more far-reaching vision of Vivaldi's four masterpieces, which he shapes, movement after movement, with astonishing inspiration. Although not averse to making Vivaldi the butt of his sarcasm and epigrams, on this occasion Biondi yields wholeheartedly to the Vivaldi magic. His violin is caressing and furious by turns, his orchestra whispers or rants, exploring with a mixture of rage and poetry, each climate, each breeze, each murmur of the natural scene. The unfathomable mystery of Vivaldi’s incredible Seasons has decidedly met with an exceptionally gifted explorer.

Faced with such a successful performance, the editor has had the sound idea of bringing together, in the present compilation, the Four Seasons and the superb Storm at Sea, the fifth concerto of Opus VIII, of which Biondi has made a landmark version, and three concertos from L'Estro Armonico taken from Biondi's complete recording of this other major work by Vivaldi. The end result of this assemblage is remarkable. At the same time, it offers a masterly glimpse of Vivaldi's concertante and a flamboyant synthesis of the art of Fabio Biondi. FRÉDÉRIC DELAMÉA