Rachel Podger & Arte Dei Suonatori - Antonio Vivaldi: La Stravaganza (2003) [SACD]

A long time ago, back in the 1970s, period instrument performances mostly sounded sweet and low down. Part of the reason for this was the catgut strings and the lower tuning, and part of the reason was that players seemed to prefer a mellower and rounder tone. But time passed and period instrument performances became more and more strident until they became nearly painful to listen to by the late '80s. Violinist Rachel Podger has recaptured the mellow sounds of yesterday by producing a warm and almost human sound with her 1739 Persarinius instrument. And with these performances of Vivaldi's La Stravaganza, Op. 4, with the superb eastern European period instrument group Arte dei Suonatori, Podger has made one of the easiest to listen to period instrument recordings since the early '70s. But Podger has done more than that: she has produced one of the most thrillingly virtuosic recordings of La Stravaganza ever recorded. As she demonstrated in her recordings of Bach's solo violin works, Podger's technique is prodigious; but while her technique was a means to an end there, here it is an end in itself, which is entirely appropriate. Vivaldi was nothing if not a show off and Podger wails on his pieces with the soul of a virtuoso, slashing and burning her way through the 12 concertos with the spirit of Paganini. Channel's sound is wonderfully clear but still reverberant. -- James Leonard