Synopsis of some of the most popular classical music compositions prepared for Internet radio's "a MUSIClassical Concert" at www.theClassicStation.com and www.ClassicalMusic.network
Believed to be composed for the Pietà during the 1720s. It is one of his most well known concertos for two solo instruments.
VIDEO:
Bonnie Hampton with her student, Kyeong Hwa Kim performs the Vivaldi Double Cello Concerto accompanied by the California Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, in their season's finale at the Califronia Theater.
Antonio Vivaldi wrote a set of concertos, Op. 10, for flute that were published ca.1728 by Amsterdam publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène.
Flute Concerto No. 2 in G minor, RV 439 La notte (also RV 104, composed in the 1710s with chamber accompaniment.
VIDEO: Antonio Vivaldi "La notte", Raphael Leone Flute, Izabella Shareyko conductor, Vienna St. Thekla church
Robert de Visée was a lutenist, guitarist, viol player, singer, and composer. He likely got some of his musical training from Francesco Corbetta. The first mention of Visée is from 1680, right around the time that he became a musician at the court of Louis XIV, king of France. It appears Visée did extremely well at court: the diaries of several courtiers mention him, and it was known he played for the King regularly before bed. It wasn’t until 1719 that de Visée was appointed official guitar teacher to the king, after teaching Louis guitar for more than two decades.
Visée published two books of guitar music, both dedicated to the king. Between the two are 12 complete suites, most beginning with an Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande. Visée’s music is some of the best examples of French Baroque guitar music we have today.
ClassicalGuitar.org
VIDEO: R. de Visee:Suite in d minor by Jorge Ariza
While many of Vivaldi's over 500 concertos were for violin, he also wrote for many different instruments and instrument combinations. His concertos for wind instruments are notable, and he wrote more than twenty for solo oboe. The oboe was a popular instrument in the Baroque era as it was an instrument used in the orchestras of Bach and Handel as well as in concertos.
The date of composition isn't known for the Oboe Concerto RV 461. It is in three movements.
VIDEO: Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 -- 28 July 1741)
Vivaldi. Oboe Concerto in A minor, RV 461.
I. Allegro non molto
II. Larghetto
III. Allegro
Burkhard Glaetzner, oboe.
Berlin Chamber Orchestra.
Conductor Hartmut Haenchen.
Recorded: Christuskirche, Berlin, 1978
Concerto for flautino, strings & basso continuo in C major (RV 444) is the second of Vivaldi's three concertos for "flautino," a term that has been interpreted to mean different instruments. Most commonly it is now assumed that Vivaldi intended these for the Baroque equivalent of the smallest sized recorder, the sopranino, an F scale instrument, although he might have also intended them for the French flageolet, a G scale instrument. However, these concertos are usually performed on the sopranino or the piccolo. The Concerto in C major, RV 444, is not unlike the 12 concertos of his Il cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Invenzione, Op. 8, in both structure and character. The concerto features a virtuosic solo part, with thirty-second notes, trills, and arpeggios for the recorder throughout the piece. In each solo episode of the opening Allegro non molto movement, rhythmic mottos are repeated and developed to explore different harmonic possibilities, while testing the performer's ability to play both legato and détaché rapidly. The Largo in A minor is typical of Vivaldi's middle movement construction, using mottos to create an aria-like melody over a simple accompaniment. The brief, final Allegro molto begins with a bouncy orchestral statement that returns to re-establish the home key of C major in each ritornello. The soloist is again tested in the intervening episodes with trills and arpeggios. The understated virtuosity of the concerto adds to the appeal of its charming character to make it the most famous of the three flautino concertos.----Description by Patsy Morita
VIDEO: Héloïse Gaillard (sopranino recorder)
David Plantier (violin I)
Lorenzo Colitto (violin II)
Patricia Gagnon (viola)
Ophélie Gaillard (violoncello)
Richard Myron (double bass)
Laura Monica Pustilnik (archlute)
Violaine Cochard (harpsichord)
Amarillis / Héloïse Gaillard (conductor)
The lute concerto in D major, RV 93, is one of four works featuring the solo lute written by Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi wrote the piece in the 1730s, a period in which he wrote two of his other works featuring the lute, the trios for violin and lute in G minor and C major.
The concerto uses the lute primarily in a high register.The lute parts are written primarily as chords, and the lute player is intended to play arpeggios based on these chords. The piece also includes important parts for the violins.Today, Ben Salfield is one of the few lutenists to perform the concerto regularly in European concerts, and the concerto is usually played on guitar. Guitarist Steve Howe performed the second movement on guitar on the band's 2002 live album Symphonic Live, into which he incorporated a number of improvisations. It has also been performed on guitar by more classical soloists, such as John Christopher Williams. The piece is also sometimes played on mandolin. The concerto is played on the Ontario Parliament Network and is performed by Canadian guitarists Liona Boyd and Norbert Kraft. It has become the channel's classical staple.
WIKIPEDIA
VIDEO:
ANTONIO VIVALDI [also attributed to J. Gottlieb Janitsch] Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708–63) was a double-bass player. After his death, his manuscripts contained almost the complete published music of Vivaldi).
Sinfonia for strings and basso continuo in E major (RV 132)
With Vivaldi, we are always discovering how little we know; how ridiculous it is that the popular mind associates him with nothing more than The Four Seasons. An academic library in Turin houses hundreds of the composer's manuscripts, many of them unpublished and unknown. VIDEO: Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini (conductor) Concerto for strings and basso continuo. in F major (RV 141)
Antonio Vivaldi composed hundreds of Concertos providing something for virtually every instrument available at the time. Among his most popular are the works for flute. He wrote a set of concertos, Op. 10, for flute that were published ca.1728 by Amsterdam publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène.
They were not originally scored for recorder but for a transverse flute.
WIKIPEDIA
VIDEO: Antonio Vivaldi
Capella Istropolitana, Jiri Valek, Oliver Dohnanyi,
Flute Concerto in F major, Op. 10, No. 5, RV 434
Vivaldi’s renown as a composer began in the early 1700s. After a Dutch music publisher issued a collection of his concertos in 1711, his fame spread throughout Europe. Today his reputation rests primarily on his legacy of nearly 500 instrumental concertos.
His most popular work, The Four Seasons, is a series of four programmatic violin concertos. Some 230 other Vivaldi concertos feature solo violin. About sixty more have survived that fall into the category of concerto à quattro: for a full string complement and continuo, with no soloist. This type – known as a ripieno concerto – fell out of favor as the popularity of the solo concerto grew, which means that such works probably date from the early 1700s.
....Program Notes by Laurie Shulman
VIDEO: Antonio Vivaldi
Sinfonia for Strings and B.C. in F major RV 137:
I. Allegro 0:14
II. Andante 2:08
III. Allegro 5:38
I Virtuosi delle Muse
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) - Vivaldi finished his wonderfully named set of violin concerti Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention) in 1725. It was designed (or at least compiled) as a set of twelve but the first four have become so famous that it is easy to forget nos. 5-12 also belong to the original grouping. The opening quartet of Contest concerti makes up The Four Seasons of course and the latter siblings have always lived in the shadow of that legendary subset. Of the remaining eight concerti, three were given equally descriptive titles. Vivaldi wrote hundreds of concerti during his prodigious career and, as with Haydn’s 104 Symphonies, the nicknamed works often get the most attention. No. 5 is known as La tempesta di mare (The Sea Storm) and is one at least three works in Vivaldi’s catalogue to bear that subtitle. Concerto No. 5 is short, even by Vivaldi’s own standards, but the composer packed a significant amount of invention and brightness into the brevity. Though clearly much less familiar today than the Four Seasons, the Sea Storm is made up of the same exciting programmatic ingredients. - See more at: http://www.utahsymphony.org/insight/program-notes/725-vivaldi-concerto-for-violin-in-e-flat-major-op-8-no-5-la-tempesta-di-mare#sthash.t9FOwtp6.dpuf
VIDEO: Violin Concerto in E-flat major,
“La tempest di Mare,”
Op. VIII, No.5, RV 253
I: Presto
II: Largo 02:52
III: Presto 05:27
The Academy of Ancient Music
Andrew Manze, director
Vivaldi wrote over forty concerti a quattro for strings alone, without a soloist, and the present group were gathered together in a single manuscript, written in the hand of Vivaldi's father, and have been preserved in the Paris Conservatoire library ever since. They are each in three movements, with the central slow movement quite brief and acting as an expressive interlude linking the two vivacious framing allegros. The exception is RV 114, which is in two movements, the first moving from a sharply dotted allegro, with a jolly Chaconne to round things off. RV 133 has a striking Rondeau finale, and it is thought that these two works may have been composed separately from the others. They are all freshly inventive and played here with springing rhythms and plenty of vitality. In three concertos, though not specified by the composer, woodwind have been added to give extra colour. The touch of abrasiveness on the string sound is aurally bracing, and the slow movements have a nicely ruminative improvisatory feel. The recording is first class.
The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs
VIDEO: Concerto for strings RV 133 in E minor
by Antonio Vivaldi
Allegro-Largo-Allegro
Budapest Strings
1991
Antonio Vivaldi's Sinfonia al Santo Sepolcro in B minor, RV 169, is one of two pieces he composed bearing the subtitle "al Santo Sepolcro," the other being a Sonata in E flat major, RV 130. Both works are scored for two violins, viola, and continuo, although it is generally accepted that the Sinfonia may be played by either orchestral or chamber forces. There are many chapels in Italy that are called "al Santo Sepolcro" (of the Holy Sepulchre), but given the provenance of the undated Vivaldi manuscript in Turin, it may have been written for a chapel incorporated as part of the Sacro Monte complex in nearby Varallo, Italy. Built in 1491 by Franciscan monk Bernardo Calmì,
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. Born in Venice, 4 March 1678 – d 28 July 1741, he is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as The Four Seasons.
Many of his compositions were written for the female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children where Vivaldi (who had been ordained as a Catholic priest) was employed from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for preferment. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died less than a year later in poverty.
VIDEO: Concerto for Strings and B.C. in D minor RV 128:
I. Allegro non molto
II. Largo
III. Allegro
I Barocchisti
Concerts for the Prince of Poland, 1725
Work: Violin Concerto in C major, 'Il piacere' Op.8 No.6, RV 180 "Il piacere" (Pleasure),
First Publication 1725 in Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, Op.8 (No.6)
The sixth in the set, the Concerto in C major for violin soloist plus strings and basso continuo, RV 180, named "Il piacere" (Pleasures), is fully as charming as the Four Seasons. The opening Allegro has a graceful and vigorous theme for the ripieno alternating with virtuoso passages for the soloists. The central Largo has a quietly pensive theme for the ripieno alternating with melancholy and meditative episodes for the soloist. The closing Allegro is more muscular and more dance-like than the opening Allegro, with a hammering theme shared by the ripieno and the soloist. What any of this has to do with pleasures is anyone's guess, but that it gives pleasure is incontestable. VIDEO: Andrew Manze, violin & director
Academy of Ancient Music
L'Estro Armonico (Harmonic Inspiration), Op. 3, is a collection of twelve concertos for one, two and four violins written by Antonio Vivaldi in 1711. It augmented the reputation of Vivaldi as Il Prete Rosso (The Red Priest). Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described the set as "perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century".
The collection was mostly put together in chronological order. These concerti are often called concerti grossi due to their use of a concertino-style ensemble (solo cello is often used).
WIKIPEDIA
VIDEO: Cyrilometodské dni 2010, Terchová, Záverečný koncert, Slovenský Komorný Orchester Bohdana Warchala, Ewald Danel, Rudolf Patrnčiak ml., Michaela Wdówkowá, Lujza Ďurišová
VIDEO: Conductor: Oliver Dohnanyi,Copella Istropoplitana Performer: Jiri Valek, Jiri Novotny, Jiri Stivin 1989 Recording NAXOS Painting sare from Sarah Jane Szikora
Composition Year 1728-29
Although the RV 443 concerto is often listed as a work for piccolo, written for "flautino," a "little flute" or high-pitched recorder that is the equivalent of today's piccolo... it can also be played by a recorder or flute.
