Vivaldi - Concertos pour Mandoline - Avi Avital

Avi Avital Mandolin

Venice Baroque Orchestra

Andrea Marcon Conductor

Concertos by Vivaldi and Paisiello

The mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital has won over international audiences in just a few years with his interpretations of Vivaldi's masterpieces.

Avi Avital was born in 1978 in Israel and learned to play the mandolin at an early age. He began performing in public at the age of eight and later attended the Jerusalem Conservatory. His exceptional talent was soon acclaimed, and he moved on to transcriptions of works for violin by the best masters. His first recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in 2012 literally brought Vivaldi's mandolin concertos back to the forefront. He has since performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Berlin Philharmonic, and with top international orchestras, drawing rave reviews from audiences everywhere.

An original and virtuoso artist, Avi Avital exalts, transcribes and adapts works for the mandolin, a small instrument from another century, because he does not want to see it disappear from the classical scene. He tirelessly searches repertoires for rarely performed pieces. The result is spectacular and is now winning over the public. The mandolin is a member of the lute family and reached its peak in Italy during the baroque period, becoming one of the typical instruments of chamber music and soirées galantes: Didn't Mozart have Don Giovanni play it in his famous Serenade?

For this concert in the magnificent setting of the Salon d'Hercule, with its perfectly balanced acoustics for a dialogue between the mandolin and the orchestra, Avi Avital has chosen a programme of Venetian music: concertos for mandolin by Vivaldi, works by Paisiello, and his “showpiece": the Four Seasons’ summer, which takes on its full meaning under Veronese's splendid Meal at Simon's. The virtuosos of the Venice Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Andréa Marcon, are his Venetian companions, in an evening dedicated to the gold of the Serenissima...