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Avi Avital

Vivaldi - Concerto for 4 Mandolins

Deutsche Grammophon
Release Date: April 11, 2023

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1 Concerto in B Minor, RV 580 / I. Allegro  
2 II. Largo  
3 III. Allegro  
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“This is how I want to make music!” That was Avi Avital’s reaction when he first saw Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini play live in Jerusalem. Now famed worldwide for his own charismatic and passionate performances, the mandolinist is delighted to be joined by this exciting period-instrument ensemble and its conductor and co-founder on his latest album, entitled simply Concertos. Together they perform three original concertos for mandolin – by Barbella, Paisiello and Hummel – and Avital’s own adaptations of concertos by J.S. Bach and Vivaldi. Antonini is the recorder soloist in the Bach, while the latest technology allows Avital to play all four parts in the Vivaldi. Concertos is set for release by Deutsche Grammophon on 17 November. The Vivaldi concerto and the Andantino of the Barbella are available to stream or download now, while excerpts from the Paisiello and Hummel works will be released on 29 September and 27 October respectively.

Avi Avital was a young student at the Jerusalem Music Academy when he was, to use his own word, “dragged” by a Baroque enthusiast friend to an Il Giardino Armonico concert. “It was a truly formative experience,” he recalls. “Everything about them was different – they played Vivaldi with such physical energy and power of expression.” Now, on Concertos, the ensemble partners Avital in what he says is probably his favourite Vivaldi concerto: RV 580 in B minor, originally for four violins. 
The mandolinist had long cherished a “clear vision” of how he wanted to perform this work. Given recent technological advances, he and Antonini decided to experiment with multitrack recording to enable him to play all four parts in his adaptation of the concerto. Avital ended up using four different mandolins – and two mandolas – in this showstopping interpretation, enabling each voice to have a different colour and character. “I’m extremely proud of the result,” he says. “I feel we managed to create the feeling of a live performance in which the soloists are communicating with each other.” 

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