Tomaso Albinoni Essentials

Tomaso Albinoni wrote over 50 operas, almost 60 concertos, and around 100 sonatas, and was as celebrated in his time as any of the finest Italian composers, Corelli, Vivaldi, and Domenico Scarlatti among them. One of his lasting achievements was establishing the modern concerto in its three-movement, fast-slow-fast format—and here you can sample the sheer energy and invention of these vibrant pieces. But Albinoni’s operatic writing was also as good as anything that emerged from late-17th- and early-18th-century Venice, and his reputation in this area is happily beginning to reemerge today thanks to some spectacular operatic recital albums.