Urgently recommended.’ (Fanfare, July 2021 – Scalero) ‘This release is not just for violinists and lovers of violin music it’s for everyone. ‘Tortorelli is equally impressive on viola and on violin… On both instruments he spins a flawless, silky line with perfect intonation.’ (Fanfare, May 2017 – Milhaud) He has assembled a critically acclaimed discography on Brilliant Classics, including albums of Saint-Saëns (94848), Milhaud (95449), Ševčík (96213), Scalero (96160) and Castelnuovo-Tedesco (96007). Long established as one of Italy’s most distinguished teachers as well as performers, Mauro Tortorelli is presently professor of violin at the Gesualdo conservatoire in Potenza as well as an active chamber musician. The effect could be compared to a professional-standard busker, playing with familiar texts and bringing an improvisational fantasy to them.

However, his performance, vibrant and imaginatively registered, makes vivid musical theatre on its own terms. Tortorelli’s arrangement make goodscholarly sense in its concentration on the ‘art of the violin’ which stimulated so much composition for the instrument in 18th- century Italy. This entails playing not only the elaborate solo parts but filling in as much of the accompaniment – string orchestra in Vivaldi’s case, basso continuo for the ‘Devil’s Trill’ – as can be fitted on the four strings of a violin. However, Mauro Tortorelli has devised the genuinely novel concept of arranging them for solo violin. The Four Seasons as you’ve never heard them before, stripped back to their pure essence as an exhibition of the art of violin playing.īoth of these Baroque masterpieces have proved themselves perenially adaptable to any number of arrangements, for ensembles from string quartet to wind ensemble.

Vivaldi solo violin