In their most important recording yet for Virgin Classics Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante tackle one of the peaks of Baroque music: Vivaldi’s 12 violin concertos Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, the collection that contains the much-loved Four Seasons. In preparing this recording Biondi has worked not from the familiar published edition of 1725 but largely from manuscripts preserved in libraries in Turin, Dresden and Manchester. The stylistic freedom (and technical difficulty) of these unpublished versions offer fascinating insights into Vivaldi’s own working methods and reveal surprisingly differences to their printed counterparts. In comparison with other extant versions, the Manchester Four Seasons display a freedom and spirit of harmonic experimentation which, for Biondi, provide the key to the works’ interpretation. Concertos No.5 ‘La tempesta di mare’ and No.7 in their Dresden version differ so substantially from the published versions as to become almost different pieces and reveal the hand - and amazing violinistic powers - of Vivaldi’s friend and pupil Johann Georg Pisendel. In terms of material the richest concerto is No.11, and Biondi draws heavily on the Turin version, choosing material and constructing a concerto slightly longer than the printed edition. With their revolutionary approach and free and impassioned playing, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante are now established as the foremost interpreters of Italian baroque music. Their earlier recording of the Four Seasons was named disc of the year in Canada, Sweden, France, Spain and Finland; their first recording as exclusive artists on Virgin Classics, of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico, prompted Gramophone’s reviewer to feel again ‘the thrill and excitement that affected me on hearing this music for the very first time’. This new recording typifies both Biondi’s sensitive approach to Vivaldi scholarship and his determination to strip away the restrictive and dogmatic performance practices of the recent past to uncover the full richness of Vivaldi’s musical language. As he says, ‘In working from manuscripts we are paying homage to Vivaldi by trying to express his original ideas. The [published] Amsterdam version contains less ‘madness’ than the original versions. By performing the original versions we reveal a recklessness that is much closer to Vivaldi’s own personality.’