Magdalena Kozena: Vivaldi

Magdalena Kozená releases her first-ever Vivaldi album and highlights not just the virtuosic aspects of the composer's writing but also a more serene and gentler side. As with much of Vivaldi's vocal writing, most of it is still unknown to modern audiences. This allowed Kozená to personally select her favorite arias based purely on musical quality and not on any preconceived ideas about "greatest hits." Kozená reunites with Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra, a collaboration that previously produced the critically-acclaimed Handel album Ah! Mio Cor. According to Kozená: "Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque have this music in their blood and did some amazing things with it that I wasn't expecting. There is one aria, for example, `Forse, o caro, in questi accenti,' which, when they started playing it, I immediately felt like I was in a gondola on a night-ride in Venice. It had that kind of magic about it."