Fabio Biondi

Fabio Biondi – Bach: Sonatas & Partitas (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 2, 2024 · Comments off

Fabio Biondi - Bach: Sonatas & Partitas (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Newly signed to the naïve label, violinist Fabio Biondi, the celebrated founder and director of Europa Galante, here presents his interpretation of one of the major peaks of the solo violin repertoire: the Sonatas and Partitas of J. S. Bach. For many years a passionate devotee of this Holy Grail of violinists, and having performed many of the works individually in the course of his career, Fabio Biondi is now, at the age of sixty, using his maturely ripened art to record the complete set for the very first time: it is the culmination of long and patient study, as well as of a process of personal development. For years Biondi was intimidated by Bach’s writing for solo violin: so intimate, yet so universal, so close to the essence of things – which the music often expresses through silence and pure, untranslateable sound – and so technically demanding as well.
(more…)

Fabio Biondi, Europe Galante – Vivaldi: Concerti per violino XI ‘Per Anna Maria’ (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 2, 2023 · Comments off

Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante expand the Vivaldi edition with the eleventh volume of violin concertos bearing the name of one of the most famous interpreters of the early eighteenth century: Anna Maria. Hailed as a “child prodigy” and outstanding artist of the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi taught for forty years, Anna Maria was an accomplished violinist, but also mastered the viola d’amore and theorbo, as well as the harpsichord, cello, lute, and mandolin. Her reputation spread throughout Europe, and we know that Vivaldi dedicated at least twenty-four concertos to her.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi – Telemann: 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin, TWV 40 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 17, 2023 · Comments off

On his first solo album, violinist Fabio Biondi presents Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin, works that reflect both the composer’s full maturity and his proficiency as a violinist himself. The dozen fantasias on the programme were written for an unaccompanied instrument and manage to embrace both the long established style for polyphony in German violin music, with fugues and multipart writing for the soloist, as well as more modern trends. For this recording Biondi played an 18th century Ferdinando Gagliano violin.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi,Europa Galante – Vivaldi: La Stravaganza (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 29, 2023 · Comments off

Of the new school of Italian authentic-instrument violinists who have moved the spotlight south from the Netherlands in High Baroque repertory, none has had more success than Fabio Biondi. There are more purely daring interpretations of Vivaldi, and more subtle ones. But Biondi and his handpicked Europa Galante ensemble send audiences away satisfied, even where historical performance remains a rarity. His performances are a great deal of fun, with big, booming outer movements taken at a breakneck clip that does nothing to impede his total mastery of the solos. In this excerpted set of concertos, published in London in 1728 as Vivaldi’s Op. 4, Bondi’s style is displayed with maximum effectiveness. The concertos have less obviously attractive tunes than the more famous L’estro armonico set or the Four Seasons concertos, replacing those with big blocks of sound that respond well to Biondi’s high-energy treatment. Sample especially the opening movement of the Violin Concerto in B flat major, RV 383a (track 1), where Europa Galante keeps up with Biondi in passagework that seems to distort the underlying pulse and take on its own rhythmic momentum. Plenty of thrills! An additional bonus is the presence of an unusual Concerto for violin, cello, strings, and continuo, RV 544, which features an invertible pair of solo parts (showing that Vivaldi could even do contrapuntal trickery when he set his mind to it). Virgin Classics’ sound in its Biondi discs has a live church acoustic that puts one in mind of an indoor swimming pool, and it may not be to everybody’s taste. In general, though, this is an excellent place to start for those curious about Biondi or even about the entire revolution that has overtaken the performance of High Baroque instrumental music.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante – Vivaldi : Concerti per violino VI “La boemia” (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 29, 2023 · Comments off

Vivaldi wrote hundreds of violin concertos, yet even this tiny sample of six, written during the composer’s visit to Prague between 1730 and 1731, demonstrates in every movement his genius of harmonic and dramatic surprise. Each concerto is startlingly original, from the opening movement of the E Minor RV 278 that pits daring solo passages against a hypnotic, pulsing orchestra, while the same concerto’s Largo even feels modern in its angularity. A more familiar Vivaldi can be heard in the C Major RV 186, with its Italianate innocence and winsome middle Largo. But whatever the composer’s mood, Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante thrill to his ingenuity at every step.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi – The 1690 “Tuscan” Stradivari (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 29, 2023 · Comments off

In the course of his illustrious career, Fabio Biondi has nurtured a remarkable empathy with Italian music from across many centuries, but strikingly so with the early Baroque violin sonata repertory, the development of which was dramatically propelled into the future by Arcangelo Corelli with his Op 5 collection. It is this empathy possessed by Biondi which has inspired the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (from its bowed instrument collection) to make him a loan of the precious 1690 “Tuscan” violin made by Antonio Stradivari, for this Glossa recording. Another skill possessed by Biondi is his deft assemblage of programmes, whether for concert or for recordings, and this new release of early eighteenthcentury violin works touches on the impact that Corelli’s music had on music-making in Dresden, Venice, Padua, London and Amsterdam, to name just a few of the destinations affected as the fame of “Arcangelo Bolognese” fanned out from Rome across Europe. With a continuo team from his Europa Galante ensemble (Antonio Fantinuoli, cello, Giangiacomo Pinardi, theorbo and Paola Poncet, harpsichord), Biondi plays sonatas by Vivaldi, Corelli, Geminiani, Tartini and Locatelli, and a Ciaccona by Veracini. Recorded in Rome, on an instrument which was originally made for the Florentine court of Ferdinando de’ Medici (and which, over time, has survived all manner of vicissitudes on its journey to Rome!), Fabio Biondi expertly captures the flavour of the eighteenth-century violin sonata.

(more…)

Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi & Emoke Barath – Vivaldi: Argippo (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 19, 2023 · Comments off

With this second contribution to the Vivaldi Edition, Fabio Biondi and his ensemble Europa Galante sign here the recording of the twentieth opera of the collection – a pasticcio in which Vivaldi ‘recycles’ hit tunes from the ‘World of Warcraft’ operas of his contemporaries.

(more…)

Europa Galante, Fabio Biondi – Concerti per la Pietà (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 19, 2023 · Comments off

Violinist Fabio Biondi has a singular capacity for finding something new and exciting in the music of Antonio Vivaldi whenever he considers it, a prodigious feat which he demonstrates with “Concerti per La Pietà”, a new collection of works calling for a variety of demanding solo challenges, superbly met by Biondi and his colleagues from Europa Galante.

(more…)

Europa Galante & Fabio Biondi – Handel: Silla (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · January 19, 2023 · Comments off

No opera from Handel is as enigmatic as Silla. This fourth London opera was composed in 1713; and that’s as far as our knowledge goes! The written music scores are incomplete and we have no information about any contemporary performance. The first Handel experts tried to find an explanation and agreed upon the theory that Silla was written for a private show in the household of the Count of Burlington, who was at the time the composer’s patron. Then, in 1969, the discovery of a glossary from June 1713 established a possible date of the first performance. The inclusion of an extravagant work dedicated to the Duke d’Aumont, a recently appointed French ambassador, suggests the possibility of a show organized by or for the Duke. That could explain not only the absence of an English translation in the glossary, which is unique about Handel’s London operas, but also the relative brevity of the work.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi, Europa Galante – Mendelssohn (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 27, 2022 · Comments off

Europa Galante has recorded Mendelssohn under Biondi’s direction! The program includes works written by Mendelssohn between the ages of 11 and 18.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi, Europe Galante – Vivaldi: I concerti dell’addio (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 26, 2022 · Comments off

Since the early 1990s, Antonio Vivaldi and Fabio Biondi have become inseparable. In his latest recording for Glossa, the latter offers further proof of the astonishing imaginative powers of Vivaldi as a composer of violin concertos, which are matched by Biondi’s own dynamic and cultured virtuosity as violinist (and director). With these ‘Farewell’ Concertos Biondi turns to works written by a Vivaldi very near the end of his life as he travelled to Vienna in a desperate search for creative opportunities.

Where Biondi’s recent ‘Il Diario di Chiara’ release saw a late Vivaldi surrounded by colleagues and successors at the Pietà in Venice, ‘I concerti dell’addio’ sees him in a Vienna in mourning for its recently-deceased emperor and more attuned to the now-fashionable galante style than to that of the Red Priest, however brilliant and ebullient Vivaldi’s compositional spirit continued to be.

The six concertos on this disc are all drawn from a collection sold in 1741 – very cheaply it seems to the count Vinciguerra Collalto – today kept in Brno, and bear witness to Vivaldi’s late style as it headed in the direction of Tartini and Locatelli.

Biondi’s selection of concertos provides him full scope to portray the vivid and masterfully-conceived imagery, a compendium of violin techniques and the opportunities for improvisation implicit in Vivaldi’s maturity.

(more…)

Fabio Biondi – Opera in musica, Carlo Monza Quartets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 18, 2022 · Comments off

Fabio Biondi - Opera in musica, Carlo Monza Quartets (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Fabio Biondi – Opera in musica, Carlo Monza Quartets (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:00:26 minutes | 1,01 GBGenre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © naïve

Fabio Biondi (born 15 March 1961) is an Italian violinist and conductor. He is a specialist in Baroque and early music.
(more…)