Viva Vivaldi!

"We are deeply indebted to Antonio Vivaldi," said the violinist. "And I might say that Vivaldi is indebted to us."

Chances are excellent that Vivaldi, famed 18th century Italian master of the baroque, would be enjoying new popularity with or without Violinist Felix Ayo and fellow members of the Italian string orchestra called I Musici (The Musicians). But I Musici (pronounced "ee Moo-zee-chee") has surely contributed to the boom. And in the process it has attracted an international following that regards it as the best string orchestra in the world. This week the orchestra begins a three-month North American tour in Quebec. Day after day the musicians painstakingly rehearsed--paying the price, said a proud member, "for being Number One."

Pursuit of Perfection. Arturo Toscanini first proclaimed I Musici "Number One" when the orchestra was founded in Rome nine years ago, and I Musici has held on to the title ever since. Repeated winners of France's cherished Grand Prix du Disque, I Musici has made 34 records, sold a phenomenal 300,000 copies. Its best seller: Vivaldi's Four Seasons. In its pursuit of perfection, the group takes four full days to record a 4O-min. LP. The result is a luxurious, butter-smooth string tone, an artful blending of the orchestra's twelve instruments (six violins, two cellos, two violas, harpsichord, bass), a dynamic control that is the envy of other instrumentalists. Also to be envied: the fact that I Musici gets along harmoniously without a conductor.

I Musici goes conductorless by choice, does not even admit the existence of a first violinist because it wishes to reproduce as precisely as possible the organization of early Italian orchestras. The musicians interrupt their rehearsals when any one of them feels that another has made a mistake. Because the leaderless method could cause endless bickering, I Musici picks its players for personality as well as technique, spends weeks studying the best soloists in Italy before naming a replacement.

Baroque Gospel. I Musici is on the road an exhausting eight months out of the year, and although it can command $2,000 a performance, it frequently settles for less in small towns, where it wants to spread the baroque gospel. (The biggest money is in Germany, the least in the U.S., where travel costs are higher.) Although I Musici's repertory includes "more modern music than our audiences like to think we know" (Barber, Britten, Bartok), attendance falls if the orchestra plays too many contemporary compositions--or even too much Mozart. For better or worse, the orchestra has discovered, nothing sells quite so well as "the madness of Vivaldi."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.