NEW VIVALDI

You’ve never heard or experienced Antonio Vivaldi’s music like this before!

On this album, the award-winning lautten compagney BERLIN presents exhilarating new perspectives on Antonio Vivaldi’s music. Thereby the ensemble and their artistic director Wolfgang Katschner also unfailingly offer spirited sound dialogues with other styles and cultures. This time they are presenting a thrilling, musically multilingual Vivaldi album featuring influences from jazz and blues, as well as from world music – particularly from the Arabian region. And in the ‘Summer’ movement from the ‘Four Seasons’ that introduces this Vivaldi update, the ensemble’s recorders transform themselves into a delightfully chirping and warbling chorus of birds.

Individual movements were selected not only from the ‘Four Seasons’ cycle for NEW VIVALDI, but also from other instrumental concerti, stage, and sacred works. Ensemble members Bo Wiget and Martin Ripper have created arrangements that are entirely tailored to the lautten compagney’s special instrumentation, that is, specifically for a baroque orchestra that has been enhanced with saxophones and numerous percussion effects.

The ensemble’s approach to the original pieces is comparatively free and easy-going regarding the instrumentation, the amount of improvisation, the tempi and the order of the movements. But they never lose sight of their immense respect for the original composers. On the contrary: with their arrangements, the lautten compagney puts early music compositions into a new, contemporary context.