Caldara: Sinfonia No. 1; Sinfonia No. 2; Sinfonia No. 3; Sinfonia No. 4; Sinfonia No. 5; Sinfonia No. 6; Sinfonia No. 7; Sinfonia No. 8; Sinfonia No. 9; Sinfonia No. 10; Sinfonia No. 11; Sinfonia No. 12

COMPOSERS: Caldara
LABELS: Verso
WORKS: Sinfonia No. 1; Sinfonia No. 2; Sinfonia No. 3; Sinfonia No. 4; Sinfonia No. 5; Sinfonia No. 6; Sinfonia No. 7; Sinfonia No. 8; Sinfonia No. 9; Sinfonia No. 10; Sinfonia No. 11; Sinfonia No. 12
PERFORMER: Salamanca University Baroque Orchestra/Ángel Sampedro
CATALOGUE NO: VRS 2001

Vivaldi’s contemporary Antonio Caldara worked during the first half of his life in and around his native Venice, then, moving to Vienna in 1716, he became vice-Kapellmeister at the Hapsburg court of Emperor Charles VI, remaining in the post until his death in 1736. Eleven of the 12 Sinfonie featured on this disc come from a contemporary manuscript while the remaining one – No. 7 of the set – was added by the Austrian musicologist Leopold Nowak, replacing one known to have been lost. Caldara’s main sphere of activity lay in vocal music and it is from the orchestral introductions of oratorios of the latter half of his career that the first two movements of these Sinfonie are taken. They are, by and large, entertaining pieces in which invigorating counterpoint is often the dominant feature. While these movements can be traced to the oratorios with which they are associated – the information is helpfully included in the accompanying booklet – the provenance of at least some of the remaining movements, sometimes dance form and often pre-Classical in their idiom, is obscure. Indeed, the Caldara scholar Brian Pritchard has even called into question their authenticity. But they are pleasing, all the same, and the music is stylishly played and well recorded. Nicholas Anderson