As the composer, conductor, scholar and provocateur explains in his own notes, this is Baroque music for our time. Federico Maria Sardelli's long experience researching and editing the music of Vivaldi leaves him perhaps ideally placed to recreate such music in his own image, which he does here with chamber, orchestral and vocal music that is less a pastiche, in which identity is obscured, than a defiant recreation of a past age.

As his fellow composer Carlo Boccadoro remarks, the result “is rather like filling antique containers with sparkling coloured liquids so that they take on an entirely new aspect; or looking at certain Renaissance portrayals that seem slightly distorted until they are viewed from exactly the right angle… Like optical illusions themselves, his music is both real and immaterial, built from solid counterpoint and born aloft by airy lightness. Sardelli subtly eludes the whole subject of musical idiom so central to all forms of contemporary music, fully aware of his own unique and inimitable individuality.”

The performers on this unique disc are experienced performers of the Baroque style, playing in 'historically informed' conditions – a further paradox that enriches this time-bending recording.

Under the baton of Sardelli, Modo Antiquo appears regularly at major international festivals and concert halls. Its discography of more than 40 titles includes many world premiere recordings.