Vivaldi: La Notte, La Tempesta Di Mare, Le Quattro Stagioni, Il Gardellino

In the course of his recordings for Alpha, François Lazarevitch has explored the music of the Baroque
and of oral and popular traditions. After Scottish and Irish music, airs de cour and Baroque suites
and sonatas, he stops off in Vivaldi's Italy. With him, of course, he has his cargo of rare instruments,
including the musette de cour (a more sophisticated form of bagpipe) which he uses here to perform
Spring from The Four Seasons, in an astonishing and very convincing version transcribed by
the great virtuoso wind player of the reign of Louis XV, Nicolas Chédeville. Lazarevitch himself has
arranged the other Seasons for the transverse flute, following a frequent eighteenth-century practice.
A new angle on these evergreen masterpieces. As François Lazarevitch says: 'I want to explore all the
early sources in depth in order to challenge my performance practice of today and enrich it with an
understanding of the style and the naturalness of period theory and phrasing. When I take tackle
old Scottish and Irish music, it is with the aim of retracing this path.' The rest of the programme is
devoted to other favourite pieces by Vivaldi, this time originally written for flute.