With this release, France's Naïve label continues its series of complete recordings of a set of rediscovered Vivaldi manuscripts housed at the National Library of Turin in Italy. Naïve is not usually given to this kind of completist enterprise, but each of these albums has been at least interesting, and some of them seem likely to permanently remake the general Vivaldi repertory as the works played seep into it. This album belongs to the latter group. Vivaldi, faced with the necessity of presenting collection of works to "L'imperatore" (Austrian emperor Charles VI, whom he met and apparently hit it off with in Trieste in 1728), gathered concertos from several sources and perhaps added new ones. But there is no sign of haste in these remarkable, even revolutionary violin concertos. Consider the broken-up texture of the first movement of the Violin Concerto in G minor, RV 331, or the curious opening of the Violin Concerto in E major, RV 263a, with its repeated tonic chords that blow Baroque harmonic rhythm out of the water. Up to a point, each of the slow movements seems more bizarre than the last, and all of them have expansive, quasi-operatic gestures that lend themselves beautifully to the period-instrument performances of violinist Riccardo Minasi and the group Il Pomo d'Oro. Minasi's knife-edge sounds may be a bit of a shock to those coming from the likes of Itzhak Perlman playing Vivaldi, but if you've heard any of the Italian historical-performance groups you'll be fine. Minasi does very well with Vivaldi's use of scordatura (retuning of the violin) in the Violin Concerto in B flat minor, RV 391, pushing the instrument into unusual timbral realms. In general this is close to an essential Vivaldi release, unknown though the music may be.