Avi Avital is doing for the mandolin what the great Andreas Segovia did for the classical guitar – lifting the instrument from being an occasional curiosity into becoming a concert hall mainstream player. Using his own arrangements of Baroque and folk pieces written for other instruments and commissioning contemporary composers, Avital has expanded the limited repertoire, and with the release of his latest album, Art of the Mandolin, we can see how far he has come.
Two Baroque masterpieces are its heart – Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Mandolins, where he is joined by his compatriot Alon Sariel and the Venice Baroque Orchestra, and Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in D Minor, an arrangement of three keyboard sonatas that Avital argues were probably originally written for his instrument.
This delightful...
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