Vivaldi and Friends – Apollo’s Fire

The Cleveland-based baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire, with its founder / director Jeannette Sorrell, has made an indelible impression on the international music market since launching on Avie with recordings of Bach, Mozart, and Monteverdi. Vivaldi and Friends is a presentation of concertos by the ‘Red Priest’, but with a twist: two authentic concertos – one for four violins, the other for two cellos – are interspersed with J.S. Bach’s transcription of the A minor concerto for four harpsichords and Jeannette Sorrell’s transcription of the ‘Summer’ concerto from the ever-popular Four Seasons. Sorrell acknowledges the widespread baroque practice of transcribing violin works for keyboard, and in her unique version performs the original violin parts on the harpsichord. The album ends with an enigmatic ‘Tango Concerto’ by the contemporary composer René Duchiffre, written in the idiom of Bach and Vivaldi for the unusual combination of two violas da gamba, an instrument not typically given the spotlight in baroque concertos and, to the composer’s mind, unjustly neglected. The use of the tango, a twentieth-century dance form, is a nod to the characteristic use of dance forms during the baroque era.