Various approaches are shown on recent recordings. 10 concertos for transverse flute and string orchestra, but it also exists in an earlier version for flute, bassoon, two violins and continuo, and recorders can and do play the flute part.

There are many ways to play the inventive little flute concerto that Vivaldi named 'La Notte' ('Night') with a movement labeled 'Ghosts' and another one (called 'Sleep') that resembles a movement from 'The Four Seasons.' Vivaldi published 'La Notte' with five other pieces as the second of his six Op. That distinction belongs to a disc with Richard Hickox conducting and Emma Kirkby among its soloists (Chandos CHAN 0518) that has Vivaldi's 'Gloria,' Bach's 'Magnificat.' It is not, however, the best recent recording of Vivaldi's vocal music. It focuses on the amorous dilemmas of a princess who has been set up as the prize for the winner of the Olympic games and is as interesting for its instrumental as for its vocal writing. Others should be warned that its plot (based on a conflict between love and duty, like most baroque opera plots) reaches levels of silliness unusual even in that genre.

It will never replace 'La Boheme' in the public's affection, but it is reasonably well sung, played with great verve on period instruments and worth the attention of baroque opera fans. One opera, 'L'Olimpiade' (Nuova Era 6932/33, two CDs with Italian text), has been conducted at the Theatre des Champs Elysees and recorded by that eminent musical antiquarian Rene Clemencic. His vocal music has not kept pace, although he produced it in prodigious quantities - nearly 100 operas, of which more than 20 survive more or less intact, plus numerous cantatas, oratorios, motets, psalms etc. A hemidemimillennium after his death, he is one of the blue-chip stocks in the classical CD market his violin concerto cycle 'The Four Seasons' is in the classical Top 10, and some other concertos are not far behind. He also inevitably (though unknowingly) generated a 250th anniversary to collide this year with Mozart's 200th - obviously unfair competition. Suddenly (not for the first or last time in music history) what had been chic (including Vivaldi) became old-fashioned.

Almost immediately, he was the victim of an abrupt change in musical taste, from the baroque through the 'style galant' and into classicism in a single generation.

Antonio Vivaldi has had more than his share of bad luck since his death in 1741.

Vivaldi gloria best recording