Vivaldi wrote nothing for solo harpsichord, a frustrating situation for many of his contemporary admirers, no doubt, which makes it hardly surprising that keyboard transcriptions of his concertos should have appeared in the early decades of the 18th century. Indeed, perhaps the only surprise is that there were not more. Bach’s transcriptions for solo harpsichord or organ of a handful of Vivaldi concertos are now relatively well known, but less so are the anonymous arrangements of 12 concertos from the composer’s Opp 3 and 4, some of them the same choices as Bach’s, which survive in a manuscript in Manchester Central Library known as Ann Dawson’s Book, and of which Enrico Baiano offers nine here.
It is not known who Ms Dawson was, nor who made the transcriptions. Whoever it was, they were less cavalier than Bach, who was happy to re-write, extend, cut and generally ‘improve’ passages when he saw fit. Instead, simplification is the name of the game, to the extent that the orchestral texture of the originals is left some way behind. Baiano’s wish, however, is to restore the tutti-solo dialogue of Vivaldi’s concertos, and so he makes quite a few changes, most of them calculated to build weightier sonorities and therefore allow a greater range of dynamic contrasts. It rather begs the question of why, as a self- confessed Vivaldi-lover, he did not just make his own arrangements in the first place. After all, that kind of thing is hardly frowned upon these days.
One is bound to wonder why in this day and age would one want to listen to a CD of Vivaldi concertos on the harpsichord, when for no more money one could hear them played by an orchestra? But Baiano’s playing is such that it both demands and repays attention. His command of the harpsichord is such that, without losing sight of the instrument’s essential character, he can convey much of the energy and excitement of the orchestral originals by means of a wide variety of textures and subtle tricks of articulation and agogic emphasis; even those typically Vivaldian gently-throbbing slow movements sound surprisingly effective, thanks to artful ornamentation and skilful chord-spreading. Minority-interest this disc may be, but it contains some notably virtuosic and clever harpsichord-playing.'