It falls into the category of strong and definitely crowd-pleasing recordings that potential buyers should nevertheless sample well it's not to everyone's taste. And they evoke the whole compass of existence, from the beauty of nature to great Moghuls from the East.This 1992 recording by American guitarist Eliot Fisk is among the fine series of releases by the defunct MusicMasters label rescued by the British Nimbus imprint. But the vast majority are for his own instrument, the violin. For example, Vivaldi was the first composer to treat the cello as a serious solo instrument. These concertos champion all sorts of instruments.

They were a great influence on music all over Europe. They’re dazzling to listen to and performers relish them.

He brought drama, excitement and a sense of story to them. But his real legacy are his 500 or so instrumental concertos, and maybe it’s Vivaldi’s prowess as an opera composer that is the secret to how affecting they are. Doesn’t that change how you feel about him?Īs a priest, Vivaldi wrote many religious works, and during his life, he was best known as a composer of operas, not instrumental works. But Vivaldi, he was teacher, and a great number of his compositions were for his students in an orphanage. Secondly, Vivaldi lived in an age when music was written either for the Church, or for noblemen and royalty. He’s known as the Red Priest, on account of his hair, which was, well, red. In fact it was touch and go when he was a baby, so much so that when he pulled through, his mother pledged that he would become a priest, and he did. There are two important pieces of information about Vivaldi, which I feel you should know.įirstly, he suffered from poor health his whole life - we think it was probably chronic asthma. There’s a lot to this composer that is easily missed to our modern ears.

In fact, people who aren’t fans of his describe his music as being 'cookie-cutter' or 'samey.' There’s even the joke that he composed just one concerto, 500 times!īut I want to make a case for Vivaldi as being much more than a purveyor of fluffy concertos. If music was a numbers game, this composer would be the undisputed greatest.

Vivaldi works