Vivaldi Edition Vol. 2

This second set of Vivaldi “published works” contains his most famous work of all–“The Four Seasons,” part of the Twelve Violin Concertos, op. 8. In fact, there’s really a lot of very fine music in this huge collection of concertos and sonatas. For years, centuries in fact, it was believed that this body of music essentially captured Vivaldi’s life work. Then, in the early years of this century, a whole slew of music was discovered in various libraries around Europe and Vivaldi became the Concerto King, with over 600 of those works to his credit. The advantage to starting your collection with the published works is twofold. First, you’ve got to start somewhere, and second, these are the works that the composer felt worth publishing. Given the excellent performances, this is a great way to get a lot of Vivaldi for a little money. –David Hurwitz