Matthew Gurewitsch on the Vivaldi Edition

"On an upper floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, in metal cabinets behind a fireproof door, is Vivaldi’s personal archive of clean autograph copies of music never published in his lifetime. … What good are scores locked in a vault? In the late 1990s the musicologist Alberto Basso, who had cataloged the Vivaldi holdings, sold the French label Opus 111 on the utopian proposition of recording the entire collection on some 100 CDs. … Before the Vivaldi Edition took off, Opus 111 sold to Naïve, another boutique label, and there it has flourished. … From the start the Vivaldi Edition caught the music media’s fancy and began receiving prizes. Even the album covers played a part: eye-catching portraits by the French photographer Denis Rouvre showed models, mostly female, in a severe high-fashion style. … The momentum of the Vivaldi Edition has grown to the point that the big names too want in. Though Jordi Savall, renowned master of the viola da gamba and conductor, has a highly successful label of his own in Alia Vox, he asked to reissue his recording of Vivaldi’s opera 'Farnace' on Naïve and is on board for a second opera" ("For Vivaldi, Many More Seasons," New York Times, 8/23/09).