In the March edition of Gramophone, I reviewed Théotime Langlois de Swarte’s latest recording with Harmonia Mundi, Concerti per una vita. Featuring eight world premiere recordings, including an early version of Vivaldi’s Summer, Langlois de Swarte has in a sense completed a project that begun in 1924 – the year in which a work by Vivaldi was first recorded. Now all of Vivaldi’s extant instrumental music has been committed to disc.

Vivaldi’s name first crops up in Gramophone’s pages in May 1926. It’s fleeting. In a review of the Hungarian violinist Adila Fachiri (1886–1962) – sister and duo-partner of the more famous Jelly d’Arányi – the Gramophone critic writes that her interpretation of the Concerto in A minor ‘has plenty of tune and rhythm’. Fachiri is presumably performing on the Stradivarius bequeathed to her by Joseph Joachim, her great-uncle and violin teacher.

Look closer, and there’s a beguiling detail. The magazine notes that the Concerto is by ‘Vivaldi-Nachèz’. Hyphenated mashups more commonly belong in the realm of the pianist-composer, notably Bach-Liszt and Bach-Busoni. Francesco Piemontesi’s recent album Bach Nostalghia is a good reminder of how the tradition of transcription lies at the heart of Bach piano performance (Pentatone 2021). Nachèz, on the other hand, will be a name familiar to a specific breed of musician: the Suzuki-trained violinist.

Tivadar Nachéz (1859–1930), also a student of Joachim’s, was a Hungarian violinist and composer. He performed at a time when string players were transitioning to metal strings. Nachéz, however, preferred his Italian gut strings for their sound quality (the ‘wire E’ apparently also cut his fingers). He produced editions of two Vivaldi violin concertos that are included in the Suzuki violin repertoire.

From the very beginnings of the recording industry, then, Vivaldi didn’t stand alone. One hundred years on, the electronic musician Thylacine is the latest to dabble in hyphenation, so to speak, bringing the music of the red-headed priest to new audiences in staggering numbers. Last week, he performed for two nights to a sold-out La Seine Musicale in Paris – that’s 13,000 pairs of ears fixed on Italian baroque fused with electronic beats.

DJ Thylacine with musicians of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the Maîtrise des Pays de la Loire | Photo Credit: Cecile Chabert

Thylacine’s latest album for Sony Music is called ‘and 74 musicians’ (gloriously showcased in the huge textural mix are the musicians of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the Maîtrise des Pays de la Loire). It features remixes of classical composers including Mozart, Albéniz, and Verdi. ‘It’s like finding a window,’ Thylacine tells me, a way in which to develop that piece of music ‘into a new state, a new area’. It might be techno for Verdi, or a more cinematic score for Debussy – Thylacine seeks out different musical languages with which to express how a classical composer or piece of music ‘speaks to him’.

Unlike his treatment of the ‘Lacrimosa’ from Mozart’s Requiem, which heavily draws on fragmentation and a looped sample, he lets the first movement of Vivaldi’s Winter more or less play out. Pulsating under the shivering, trilling strings (‘Aggiacciato tremar trà neri algenti /Al Severo Spirar d' orrido Vento’ reads the sonnet that Vivaldi published alongside his concertos), Thylacine’s subtle syncopations bubble in life. Brass instruments are integrated into an electronic groan that portends the weather to come. Violinist Luka Faulisi explodes onto the scene with a rhythmic integrity that somehow seems to entrain the percussion and club beats themselves. And if this wasn’t enough, a choir then enters: this is Vivaldi made apocalyptic.

Musicians of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the Maîtrise des Pays de la Loire | Photo Credit: Cecile Chabert

So 300 years since the publication of the Four Seasons and 100 years since Vivaldi’s music was first recorded, there seems to be no stopping the Italian (whose skeleton was potentially just discovered in Vienna during the construction of a new bicycle lane). Whether it’s through Baroque violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte or electronic producer Thylacine, Vivaldi is truly alive and well today.