The violin concerto accompanied Vivaldi throughout his life. And more than any other genre, the circa 220 extant violin concertos reflect the biographical and professional events relating to the "Red Priest". Hence the idea – proposed, we believe, for the first time on disc – of recording 18 concertos, divided into three “seasons” that illustrate the evolution of Vivaldi’s art through the three different stages of his career: the early years, his maturity and the late period.

The Venice Baroque Orchestra’s first Archiv collaboration with their regular guest soloist Giuliano Carmignola could almost be a retrospective sampler of the kind of distinguished recordings they previously made for Sony Classical. Here are two Vivaldi concertos of the relaxed and warmly lyrical kind that he wrote in later life, alongside a concerto from Locatelli’s L’arte del violino, complete with stratospheric cadenzas. The disc rounds off by taking a promising new direction in the form of an elegant concerto by Tartini.

An eminent interpreter of Vivaldi, Giuliano Carmignola has always had a great affinity with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, as can be heard in his landmark recordings of the Violin Sonatas with Andrea Marcon (2002), the Violin Concertos with Concerto Köln (2014, Diapason d'or), and the Sonatas & Partitas (2018), which Gramophone judged to be "a first-rate choice among the recordings of these works on period instruments, despite the competition”.