Vivaldi: Motets.(motets composed by Antonio Vivaldi)

* Ciofi; Europa Galante/Biondi. Text and translation. Virgin Classics 45704

These motets are not the polyphonic choral pieces familiar from college glee club but solo pieces on liturgical themes or intended for liturgical use. Vivaldi's choice of a soprano soloist for these pieces might suggest that he composed them for the Ospedale della Pieta, the girls' orphanage in Venice where he taught; but of the four included here this seems to be the case only for the early Laudate Pueri, RV 600.

According to Michael Talbot's annotations, the later pieces--In Furore, RV 626; In Turbato Mare Irato, RV 627; and O Qui Coeli, RV 631--were composed for various patrons and purposes in Rome and Saxony. The musical settings are perhaps better attuned to the text in those later pieces, but all of them, alternating spacious, long-breathed slow movements with flashy, virtuosic writing based on operatic models, offer distinctive pleasure.

Where previous generations of early-music singers--Emma Kirkby, for example--used specialist vocal techniques woven more or less from whole cloth, Patrizia Ciofi, like some other recent practitioners, apparently bases her "period" technique on modern foundations. Her singing, at least as recorded, is full-bodied and clear, moving easily "on the breath." To accommodate the composer's wide-ranging vocal display, she allows register shifts, sometimes incorporating a chest resonance once considered taboo in this style (the start of "Sit nomen domini," in Laudate Pueri, and the opening of In Turbato Mare ...