Few lovers of Vivaldi's music can have overlooked the wealth of available recordings of the six works on this new disc. It contains most of Vivaldi's concertos for solo recorder and strings, but two—La tempesta di mare, RV433 and La notte, RV439—which, though surviving in two or more versions, are more probably, perhaps, flute pieces. Nevertheless, it seems a little odd to have omitted one of three concertos which Vivaldi wrote for ''flautino'' (an instrument perhaps approximating the smallest member of the recorder family, the sopranino) and to play the two remaining ones on a treble recorder, two sizes down from the sopranino. No key transposition is needed, although the colours are radically changed with the alteration in pitch. So what we have here are six works played on a treble recorder where, in all probability we should have two with a transverse flute, two with sopranino and two only with the aforementioned treble instrument. Such matters may not concern all readers, yet I mention them because Vivaldi was a sensitive and effective colourist and when he called for a flautino we should at least accept that he probably wanted something small.
Dan Laurin is a proficient player, neither conservative nor especially avant-garde in his interpretative outlook. He does not, for instance, attempt to take his instrument beyond its naturally expressive limits, yet on the other hand is both tasteful and quite adventurous in his ornamentation; the slow movement of the C major Concerto (RV443) affords a pleasing example. Passagework is clean and athletic and the recorder is effectively balanced with the far from disagreeably astringent sound of the single-stringed Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble. All the more a pity it seems to me, then, that an artist who shows such sensibility to texture and colour should have settled for one type and size of instrument to execute all the solo work. One disappointment occurs in the Largo e cantabile of the F major Concerto (RV434), where both solo playing and simple accompaniment come across as stark and unyielding, without much feeling for the lyricism which the music unquestionably possesses. A mixed pleasure.'