Andrew Manze, Romanesca - Vivaldi - "Manchester" Sonatas (1993)

Listening to the sonatas in this 1993 Harmonia Mundi recording after seeing the written scores, it is easier to understand the process of converting dots into music. Although the title page (in Vivaldi's showiest calligraphy) reads Suonate a Violino e Basso per il Cembalo (ie keyboard), this recording injects extra colour - Nigel North adding to the continuo, playing archlute, theorbo and guitar. His plucked strings are a welcome feature throughout, being especially prominent in the dramatic opening to Sonata number 7 in c. Elsewhere, Andrew Manze provides his own elaborations in the slow movements, for which the scores do not write out embellishments for the repeated sections. His playing is characteristically cool (sometimes bordering on austere). And although not as technically demanding as the violin concertos, these sonatas have plenty of double-stopping and demand precision as well as imagination. As with his Handel Sonatas on the same label, Manze's playing offers what seems to be an authentically Baroque style. (Fabio Biondi's version of these sonatas provides a marked contrast in a recording that is worth consideration if you're looking for something more exuberant.)
Vivaldi's Manchester Sonatas are, like his violin sonatas generally, an acquired taste. While not as immediately engaging as his concertos, they are richly rewarding to those who are prepared to give them time. And how fitting that a collection of sonatas that have their home in England and have benefited from some of Britain's finest scholarship (Talbot and Everett, above all), should have been recorded so expertly by Messrs Manze, North and Toll. Equally fitting, too, that Paul Everett - who wrote his meticulously detailed thesis on Vivaldi's Manchester collection - should have provided the liner notes.