There's been a bit of Vivaldi-related talk on the baroque/early music listening thread so I wondered whether there'd be enthusiasm for a thread about his music. I guess that for many people the name still conjures up anachronistically romantic performances of the Quattro Stagioni and not much else, apart maybe from Stravinsky's comment that he composed the same concerto several hundred times. (Stravinsky of course could not have known more than a handful of said concertos.)
I think that a major change in the way his music was performed and appreciated came with Harnoncourt's recording of the Seasons, released in 1977. For the first time the enormous variety of colour and expression latent in the music was brought out, with the help of Baroque instruments and a no-holds-barred attitude to how they might be played and how they might sound. (One example: the slow movement of the "Spring" concerto, where the "barking" of the viola part sounds in the famous ASMiF recording like a smoothly integrated part of the violin's dreamy accompaniment, whereas with Harnoncourt it sounds like, well, a dog barking, as suggested in the score.) This I think led directly to new generations of performers exploring the rest of the Vivaldi repertoire with this kind of approach, like Giardino Armonico, Ensemble Matheus, Pomo d'Oro, Concerto Italiano and the rest, finally bringing out IMO what is most distinctive in Vivaldi.
Not so well known is the fact that his second most prolific concerto soloist is the bassoon, with 39 concertos. Something about this instrument (and/or a particular player he worked with) brought out the best in Vivaldi, and many of these pieces are on a very high level of accomplishment (and virtuosity) indeed. Something that's particularly interesting and radical about Vivaldi's instrumental music is what might be called a modular construction, where recurrences of material are often truncated or extended in ways that almost suggest tape-editing, and ingenious textures which sometimes involve richly interlocking figures while elsewhere (especially in slow movements) seeming to result from taking a "normal" texture and removing most of it.
And then there are all the operas and church music, and the various instrumental pieces which don't involve solo/tutti interactions. I can get into a state where Vivaldi is all I want to hear for some time. Of course he was apt to reuse ideas in different contexts, maybe giving the same melody a different accompaniment or chopping something off the end of it, but this can also give the impression of one enormous kaleidoscopic work where sometimes different "pieces" relate more closely than different "movements" in the same piece, which is another interesting and radical idea.
I think that a major change in the way his music was performed and appreciated came with Harnoncourt's recording of the Seasons, released in 1977. For the first time the enormous variety of colour and expression latent in the music was brought out, with the help of Baroque instruments and a no-holds-barred attitude to how they might be played and how they might sound. (One example: the slow movement of the "Spring" concerto, where the "barking" of the viola part sounds in the famous ASMiF recording like a smoothly integrated part of the violin's dreamy accompaniment, whereas with Harnoncourt it sounds like, well, a dog barking, as suggested in the score.) This I think led directly to new generations of performers exploring the rest of the Vivaldi repertoire with this kind of approach, like Giardino Armonico, Ensemble Matheus, Pomo d'Oro, Concerto Italiano and the rest, finally bringing out IMO what is most distinctive in Vivaldi.
Not so well known is the fact that his second most prolific concerto soloist is the bassoon, with 39 concertos. Something about this instrument (and/or a particular player he worked with) brought out the best in Vivaldi, and many of these pieces are on a very high level of accomplishment (and virtuosity) indeed. Something that's particularly interesting and radical about Vivaldi's instrumental music is what might be called a modular construction, where recurrences of material are often truncated or extended in ways that almost suggest tape-editing, and ingenious textures which sometimes involve richly interlocking figures while elsewhere (especially in slow movements) seeming to result from taking a "normal" texture and removing most of it.
And then there are all the operas and church music, and the various instrumental pieces which don't involve solo/tutti interactions. I can get into a state where Vivaldi is all I want to hear for some time. Of course he was apt to reuse ideas in different contexts, maybe giving the same melody a different accompaniment or chopping something off the end of it, but this can also give the impression of one enormous kaleidoscopic work where sometimes different "pieces" relate more closely than different "movements" in the same piece, which is another interesting and radical idea.
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