In the highly unlikely event of our friends at BBC Music Magazine ever inviting me to do one of their ‘Music That Changed Me’ features (in which musicians contribute a potted autobiography based on key recordings which have shaped their development), Cecilia Bartoli’s 1999 Vivaldi Album with Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini would undoubtedly have a starring role – I’ll never forget the sense of wonder and excitement I felt on unwrapping my latest purchase from the long-since extinct Britannia Records and hearing the Italian mezzo bursting onto the scene part-way through what appeared to be a choral arrangement of ‘Spring’ from The Four Seasons (actually an aria from Dorilla in Tempe, for which the ‘Red Priest’ either previewed or recycled music from his best-known work).

1. Il Giardino Armonico Vivaldi
2. Cecilia Bartoli Sings Vivaldi
3. Viva Vivaldi Cecilia Bartoli Il Giardino Armonico

It marked my first encounter with Bartoli herself, with historically-informed performance, and with Vivaldi as an operatic composer, sparking a lifelong fascination with baroque opera which has played out extensively in these pages over the past eight years as well as in my own parallel life as a performer: the album not only contributed to my decision to put aside my violin in favour of exploring my own potential as a singer, but also inspired me to get involved with numerous exhumations of baroque rarities further down the line.

Twenty years later, Bartoli’s back with a second scintillating instalment of arias from a composer whose operatic genius is now widely recognised – many of the works represented on that first disc have since been recorded in full thanks to projects like Naïve’s pioneering Vivaldi Edition (which yielded a marvellous complete Dorilla this time last year), and a new generation of singers like Philippe Jaroussky and Julia Lezhneva have taken up the baton and run with it on their own recital-albums in the wake of Bartoli’s advocacy. It’s every bit as electrifying as the first volume, and in some respects even outdoes it: now in her early fifties, Bartoli’s wiry, astonishingly agile voice remains in pristine condition thanks to her astute repertoire choices and careful vocal management, with no signs of wear and tear from her assumptions of roles like Bellini’s Norma and Amina in the interim. Her trademark machine-gun coloratura (not to all tastes, I’m aware, but it thrills me every time) continues to astound in arias like the opening ‘Se lento ancora fulmine’ from Argippo (recently allotted to Joyce Didonato’s Sycorax in the Metropolitan Opera’s pasticcio The Enchanted Island) and the martial ‘Combatta un gentil cor’ from Tito Manlio, whilst the staccato top Cs in ‘Quell’augellin che canto’ (a lilting pastorale with obbligato violin which foreshadows Handel’s ‘Se in fiorito’ from Giulio Cesare) are despatched with pinpoint accuracy.

In the half-dozen slow laments, including ‘Leggi almen’ from Ottone in Villa and ‘Sovente il solo’ from Andromeda Liberata (a sort of reverse ‘Dopo notte’, in which the singer muses that the sun always sets on even the most brilliant of days), the command of long lines which Bartoli’s developed in the course of projects like Norma really comes into its own, as does the additional muscle and bite which she’s acquired in the lower-middle register over the last decade or so.

Directed by Brian Large. With Cecilia Bartoli, Giovanni Antonini, Enrico Onofri, Mario Bianchi. The spectacular mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli is joined by the ensemble Il Giardino Armonico in a program of baroque music from composer Antonio Vivaldi, 'The Red Priest'. 2002 - Il Giardino Armonico. Artist Portrait (Teldec, 0927-48174-2) 2009 - Il Barocco Strumentale Italiano (Nuova Era, 232891, 2 CD) Video. Elenco di DVD video realizzati dal gruppo. Antonio Vivaldi, Viva Vivaldi, con Cecilia Bartoli, mezzosoprano; dir. Antonini (Arthouse Musik) Il Giardino Armonico, musiche di Castello, Spadi, Marini. Viva Vivaldi -Di due rai languir costante, L'Olimpiade, Tito, etc (Live) / Cecilia Bartoli, Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico.

The playing of Ensemble Matheus is a smidgen more refined than that of Il Giardino Armonico on the first volume, the horns slightly less unbridled and rasping and the string sound not quite so rough and ready; directing from the violin, Jean-Christophe Spinosi contributes stylish solos in ‘Quell’augellin’, and there’s an equally outstanding cameo from an unidentified flautist in ‘Sovente il solo’. (My one caveat about the album is that the booklet is mainly devoted to glowing testimonials to Bartoli and her first Vivaldi recording from the likes of Antonio Pappano, Rolando Villazón, Marilyn Horne and Marc Minkowski rather than detailed information on the performers or the music on this new instalment).

All in all, then, this is a life-enhancing, exhilarating album which showcases the infinite variety of singer and composer alike and looks set to win new fans for both as well as being a shoo-in for lovers of that stunning 1999 disc – viva Bartoli, and viva Vivaldi!

Until 31st December, we're offering up discounts of up to 50% on Bartoli's back catalogue, including the original Vivaldi Album: you can browse the complete list of titles here.

Founded in 1985 and conducted by Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico has established itself as one of the world’s leading period instrument ensembles, bringing together musicians from Europe’s relevant music institutions. The ensemble’s repertoire mainly focuses on the 17^th and 18^th century. Depending on the demands of each program, the group consists of six up to thirty musicians.

Il Giardino Armonico is regularly invited to festivals all over the world performing in the most important concert halls and receiving high acclaim for both concerts and opera productions, such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Vivaldi’s Ottone in Villa, Handel’s Agrippina, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, La Resurrezione and Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Cecilia Bartoli during the 2012 edition of the Salzburg Whitsun and Summer Festival.

Besides, Il Giardino Armonico sustains an intense recording activity.
After many years as an exclusive ensemble of Teldec achieving several major awards for the recordings of works by Vivaldi and the other 18^th century composers, the orchestra had an exclusive agreement with Decca/L’Oiseau-Lyre recording Handel’s Concerti Grossi op. VI and the cantata Il Pianto di Maria with Bernarda Fink. Il Giardino Armonico also released on Naïve La Casa del Diavolo, Vivaldi’s Cello Concertos with Christophe Coin, as well as the opera Ottone in Villa, that won the Diapason d’Or in 2011. Furthermore, for the label Onyx it recorded Vivaldi’s Violin Concertos with Viktoria Mullova.

After the universal success and the Grammy Award received for TheVivaldi Album with Cecilia Bartoli (Decca, 2000), a new cooperation with her in 2009 led to the project Sacrificium (Decca), a Platinum Album in France and Belgium and a further Grammy Award. The most recent project with Cecilia Bartoli brought about the release of the album Farinelli (Decca, 2019).

On Decca Il Giardino Armonico also published Alleluia (2013) and Händel in Italy (2015) with Julia Lezhneva, volumes acclaimed by the public and critics.

In co-production with National Forum of Music in Wroclaw (Poland), Il Giardino Armonico published Serpent & Fire with Anna Prohaska (Alpha Classics – Outhere Music Group, 2016) winning the ICMA “Baroque Vocal” in 2017. The ensemble recorded the Telemann CD and LP (Alpha Classics, 2016), that won the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and the Echo Klassik Award in 2017.

Il Giardino Armonico Vivaldi

The recording of five Mozart Violin Concertos with Isabelle Faust (Harmonia Mundi, 2016) stands as the result of the prestigious cooperation with the great violinist, winning the Gramophone Award and Le Choc de l’année in 2017.

A new Vivaldi Album Concerti per flauto has been published (Alpha Classics, March 2020), winning the Diapason d’Or: a generous bouquet of this repertoire with Giovanni Antonini as soloist, recorded between 2011 and 2017.

Il Giardino Armonico is part of the project Haydn2032, for which the Haydn Stiftung Basel was created to support both the recording project of the complete Haydn Symphonies (label: Alpha Classics) and a series of concerts in various European cities with thematic programs focused on this repertoire. In November 2014 the first album titled La Passione was released and won the Echo Klassik Award (2015). Il Filosofo, issued in 2015, has been awarded with the “Choc of the Year” by Classica. The third album Solo e Pensoso was released in August 2016; the fourth Il Distratto in March 2017, winning the Gramophone Award in the same year. The eighth volume La Roxolana has been published in Jan 2020, and the ninth one L’Addio in Jan 2021, winning the “Choc of the Year” by Classica.

Cecilia Bartoli Sings Vivaldi

Now the series is enriched by another monument by the Austrian composer: Die Schöpfung (The Creation) has been published in October 2020 with the Bavarian Radio Chorus.

The ensemble worked also with such acclaimed soloists as Giuliano Carmignola, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima.

Viva Vivaldi Cecilia Bartoli Il Giardino Armonico

In 2018 Il Giardino Armonico continued the collaboration with the young and gifted violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja with a new program of fertile tension between past and future, bringing together philological accuracy and contemporary music: the volume What’s next Vivaldi? has been published in October 2020 on Alpha Classics.

The most recent projects include the recording of La morte della Ragione (co-produced with National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, published by Alpha Classics and awarded with the Diapason d’Or in 2019), a program focused on the raise of Baroque sensibility through Europe and the search for a renewed listening experience of early music.