Sergio Azzolini Completes Vivaldi Bassoon Concerto Recording Project With New Album

Bassoonist Sergio Azzolini will release Concerti per fagotto VI on July 3, marking the completion of his six-album exploration of Antonio Vivaldi's bassoon concertos for naïve classiques' Vivaldi Edition.

Recorded with his ensemble L'Onda Armonica, the new release completes Azzolini's survey of the 39 known bassoon concertos attributed to Vivaldi. The album becomes the 76th volume in the Vivaldi Edition, an ongoing recording project documenting works from the Foà-Giordano collection housed at the National Library of Turin.

The release includes four complete bassoon concertos that had not previously appeared in Azzolini's series: RV 501 (La Notte), RV 478, RV 487, and RV 466. It also features the surviving movements of the incomplete concertos RV 468 and RV 482, supplemented by movements adapted from Vivaldi cello concertos RV 399 and RV 406. The album concludes with Azzolini's adaptation of the C Minor Cello Concerto, RV 402.

Vivaldi composed an unusually large number of concertos for bassoon during the final decades of his life, despite the instrument serving primarily as part of the continuo section during the period. Musicologists believe the composer wrote many of these works for accomplished bassoonists he encountered throughout Europe, including musicians associated with Count Wenzel von Morzin's orchestra in Prague, Dresden court bassoonist Anton Möser, and Venetian performer Giuseppe Biancardi.

Azzolini, born in Bolzano, Italy, has built an international career as both a modern and Baroque bassoonist. He studied with Klaus Thunemann in Hanover and has performed with ensembles including Concentus Musicus Wien, Accademia Bizantina, Holland Baroque Society, and Ensemble Baroque de Limoges. From 1998 to 2024, he served as professor of bassoon and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik Basel.

Founded in 2013, L'Onda Armonica specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire, with a particular focus on Italian Baroque music and its influence throughout Europe. The ensemble previously contributed recordings to the Vivaldi Edition, including Concerti per violoncello III and Concerti per fagotto V.

Conceived by musicologist Alberto Basso, the Vivaldi Edition aims to record the entire collection of nearly 450 Vivaldi manuscripts preserved in Turin. The project is expected to conclude in 2028, coinciding with the 350th anniversary of the composer's birth.