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Summary: Vivaldi Boycott Over.
Comment: I was shocked and excited this week when I saw an add for a Yo-Yo Ma album of Vivaldi's music. It's a great partnership- one of the greatest cellists of our times pairing up with one of the founding fathers of the cello as a solo vehicle. Being a Vivaldi fan, and also being aware of Ma's previous two baroque CDs, I was begining to think that he intended to boycott recording Vivaldi for his entire career. How can one record two baroque cello CD's without one piece by the the greatest contributer of baroque repitiore? Thankfully that ignorance is over. The CD is somewhat disapointing, however. Ma is an undisputed master of the modern cello, and he seems relatively at home with the baroque fitted instrument, but he does not have mastery over the baroque instrument. The lower pitch and darker, duller tone quality are expected and enjoyable parts of period practice, but Ma and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra have balance problems. Vivaldi's vivacious style contains much rapid figuration where clairity is a must for success of the music. The B-flat major and g minor concertos suffer the most from this muddying of the details, which in effect is the muddying Vivaldi's entire musical intent. The Baroque cello is dark and muted in tone, but under a master is never muddy. The concertos do spark with a violent energy in the outer movements, with a tinkering wave of continuo sounds always at hand. But it's during the murky always heavy sounding solos that disapointment sets in. The Contrabass always plays the continuo in the concertos along with a showering of plucked instruments, and Ma's already muddied solos are buried under more sediment, plus the expressive mood of passages is made uniformly heavy and inflexible because of this decision. Masterful playing might have overcome these preformance decisions, but the cello playing here is not masterful.
Other than the B flat, and the g and c minor concertos the other works are all arrangements of Vivaldi. This immediately seems strange because Vivaldi (unlike Bach of the simply baroque CDs) wrote 27 cello concertos and nine sonatas that survive today. The argument described in the notes for this is a "want for more varitey" and concertos for strings having their "limitations- absence of woodwinds for example." This want coming in part (Koopman of the orchestra was the other partner) from Ma, a man who has recorded Bach's suites several times. The suites are great works, and probably Ma's favorites, but my point is that by the standard stated above those albums have much less variety than a non-arranged Vivaldi album would. The arangements themselves are clever- close attention was put forth in there creation, although they would have shocked Vivaldi and his contemporaries despite what the program notes argue. But overall they are much less effective than the original Vivaldi. There are six total tracks of vocal arangements. These are all singing arias that contain beautiful tunes, but lack Vivaldi's cello approach which, among other things, contrasts rapid, charged passages with singing, dreamy ones. The choral arangments lack virtuosity and contrast that Vivaldi would have employed for the cello. Thus these aragments are pretty but rather empty without the human voice. The best of the choral arangments are the 17 Laudamus Te (a duet, here for two cellos) and the 18 Quanto Magis Generosa( the viola d'amore and cello mix wonderfully here).
The slow movement to the winter concerto from the four seasons makes a nice conversion to the cello (this would not shock Vivaldi and CO.) in track two. Also arranged is the great d minor concerto for lute and Viola d'amore, now for cello and chamber organ. Vivaldi chose two interestingly contrasting yet somehow complementary instruments. The organ and cello here are interestingly contrasting, but not very complementary. The organ is too quiet (making for a very uneven pairing) and it's tone suffers from a soft, pinched quality that is at odds with the sound intended by Vivaldi. Overall though, this is an interesting (if not entirely satisfying) CD with many great moments. The Brooding interpretation of the g minor concerto is hard to forget. But the highlight for me was the tragic c minor concerto, which is delicately handled, especially the 1st movement.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sometimes the Cello Player Wins...
Comment: I am probably more a fan of Vivaldi than I am of the Cello. Attribute this to my being a wind player and most enamored of the toots and squeaks that are our personal domain. But Yo-Yo Ma transcends and musical favoritism. He has certainly lifted the cello out of its undeserved anonymity and brought it into the musical foreground. He has a tremendous control over his sonority and complete loyalty to the sense of his music. In other words, he is much more than another great cellist; he is also an eminent musician. Fifty albums, 15 Grammy awards and a taste that spans genres - that's genius.
This quickly becomes obvious in the album at hand. Playing a 1712 Stradivarius specifically reconfigured as a baroque instrument he approaches a variety of Vivaldi's music, both written for the cello or newly transcribed for Ma. You get three cello Concerti (the G Minor for two cellos with Jonathan Manson, the B Flat Major, and the C Minor). All strong, performances that balance an analytic understanding of the music's requirements with a fine sensitivity for the artistic content.
The Concerto for Viola d'Amore, Lute and Orchestra, is rewritten for Cello, Organ, and Strings with Ton Koopman on organ. Koopman's choices of voices on this piece are a bit strange. The organ tootles a more than you would expect - occasionally sounding like a recorder on steroids. But Ma rides it out in style capturing the piece for his own. The Largo from Winter has been arranged so that the solo violin is now a solo cello. Since this is a beautiful melody in any case, it works, but this is more than a trivial rearrangement - more of a rewriting.
In addition there are rearrangements of some six opera and oratorio arias. All are interesting and involve some very performances from the other soloists as well as Yo-Yo Ma's own high standard of playing (including an oboe/cello duet with Alfredo Bernardini). I'm astonished at the resources Koopman seems to have at hand with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, which seem to defy the principle that original instrument ensembles should sound reedy and a bit weird.
[Dedicated to the memory of Bob Zeidman, one of Amazon's best reviewers and a voice that will always be missed.]
This is very accessible music written by one wizard and played by another. Make it a favored addition to your classical shelf.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Recital - Transcriptions Notwithstanding
Comment: Yo Yo Ma seems to be popping out CD's faster than Imelda Marcos bought footwear, but, being Yo Yo Ma, these are not "cookie cutter" albums; each is individual and has a lot to say about the music explored.
And this is no less true of his latest release, "Vivaldi's Cello", which really could have been called "Simply Baroque 3" as it features his collaborator on those two releases, baroque music master Ton Koopman (with his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra). Like those previous albums, it contains pieces actually written for the cello as well as transcriptions of others originally written for other instruments or voice. This was done, as with the "Simply Baroque" duo, to attract a more "crossover" audience, but the transcriptions are expertly done and, as Koopman himself says, this kind of thing was very common in the baroque period.
The three main items on the program are the famous g minor concerto for two cellos RV531 (in which Ma is joined by baroque cellist Jonathan Manson), the c minor concerto RV401, and the B flat major concerto RV423. This is Ma's first attempt at Vivaldi, and he sounds perfectly at home here. As is usual with Vivaldi's concerti, virtuoistic passages abound, and Ma does not dissappoint. His playing is rich and clear, and the sound of the baroque cello he plays exquisite.
The rest of the program, as mentioned above, is made up of transcriptions, most of which are ingenious. Vivaldi's only surviving oratorio, "Juditha Triumphans" contains some of his greatest music for the human voice, and two selections from this work are included here: the jovial "Noli, o Cara, te Adorantis" and the meltingly beautiful "Quanto Magis Generosa". The latter is especially fine - I admit I listened to this track three times when previewing this album. Also included are two extracts from the rarely performed pastoral opera "La Fida Ninfa", a glorious rendition of the "Laudamus Te" from the "Gloria" (which sounds, here, as if it had been written for cello), a lively aria from "Giustino", and the obligatory selection from "The Four Seasons", probably the least interesting track on the CD.
To cap things off, we're given a spirited transcription of the concerto for Viola d'Amore and Lute RV540.
Ma is accompanied expertly by Koopman and his famous baroque band and the pairing, as in the first two "Simply Baroque" albums, is spot on. Topping it off are beautifully written, informative, and user-friendly liner notes by David Mermelstein.
This is a highly enjoyable and wonderfully exceuted recital, both for the uninitiated and for the Vivaldi expert. Granted, it probably won't sell as well as Ma's more recent Brazilian albums, but if you're a Yo Yo Ma fan, love the cello, love Vivaldi, adore baroque music, or just want a rapturous way to spend an hour or so, then I would recommend this CD highly.
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