Young cellist Harriet Krijgh has made several recordings on Capriccio, but this is her debut on the Deutsche Grammophon label. She's a committed, highly expressive artist, and anyone worried that she would tone it down for the venerable label need not give it another thought. This is not a historically oriented performance, but it shares, with the new trends in historical Vivaldi playing, an emphasis on operatic effect. Annotator Guido van Oorschot writes of Krijgh's long involvement with Vivaldi's work and of her conviction that individual works had specific meaning to him, and by extension, to her. She ends the album with a transcription of the aria "Cum dederit" from the Nisi dominus, RV 608, and it has a considerable emotional impact. Krijgh's baseline emotional level is quiet (sample the Largo from the Trio Sonata in C minor, RV 83, where she is joined by Amsterdam Sinfonietta leader Candida Thompson on the violin). With this background, her mastery of the virtuoso passages in these concertos leaps out at the listener. The other attractive quality here is the freedom of the interaction between Krijgh and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, a chamber orchestra (but a not too small chamber orchestra) founded on the idea of cooperation between distinctive instrumentalists. The performances seem to breathe, and Krijgh, who has been at it since her early teens, conveys a sense of blooming into creative freedom after long years of study. The sound from a large hall in Leiden is a bit too spacious but probably in line with the space for which Vivaldi wrote this music. Highly recommended.
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