Flute Concertos (SACD)

It is highly probable that the successful publisher Michel Charles Le Cène in Amsterdam requested Antonio Vivaldi to compose concertos for flute. Vivaldi had already included solo passages for the transverse flute in numerous chamber concertos (e.g. for flute, oboe, violin, bassoon and basso) and even a virtuoso aria in his opera Orlando RV 728 (1727), but had apparently up to the end of the 1720s not yet composed “genuine” concertos for the transverse flute. When Le Cène contacted Vivaldi, he was fully occupied with opera productions and tours and presumably lacked sufficient time to compose new concertos. Instead, he made arrangements for this new instrumentation from some of his already existing chamber concertos which had already proved to be popular and already featured the recorder or transverse flute in the majority of solo passages. Vivaldi must have been aware that concertos with a descriptive title were good sellers: three of these – “La Tempesta di Mare” (no. 1), “La Notte” (no. 2), and “Il Gardellino” (no. 3) – are found right at the beginning of the new collection of works printed in 1729 by Le Cène as 0p. 10. Barthold Kuijken is accompanied on his new recording by La Petite Bande and his brother Sigiswald Kuijken.