Carnival in Venice, the event people are talking about throughout Europe, is indeed the accumulation of the numbers of games, which were allowed to be played only in that season, unless there are other special reasons for celebration. In this sort of entertainment, we can enumerate comedies, operas, casino games, ballet, parades, bull fights, tightrope dances, puppet shows, and jugglers' performances. At that point in the celebration, everyone is allowed to wear masks all day long. In the old days, the carnival would start on the second day of Christmas and go throughout the beginning of the new year. The reason this was eventually postponed by officials was concern for public safety and the fact that many people were using masks as disguise to commit crimes. This release is to celebrate not only the carnival but also the works of Antonio Vivaldi. The form of Venetian opera was evoked by the baroqu eaesthetics: it demanded richness of impressions, diversity, contrasts, surprises but at the same time full pleasure transmitted from the stage. That is why the perfect solution was found in weaving dramatic action and love affairs. The public experienced a huge load of emotions throughout the performance. When the carnival was in full swing, Venice would experience up to five operatic productions a year!
Vivaldi: Stabat Mater, Gloria & Other Works (Live)
Gramola Records
CD
$21.99Apr 06, 2018
This past year's Easter Concert of the Bach Consort Vienna, conducted by Ruben Dubrovsky in the Basilica of Klosterneuburg Monastery, featured works by Antonio Vivaldi, which he composed during his engagement with the orphanage Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. The young girls growing up there received early musical training, which led the choir and orchestra of the Ospedale to become internationally acclaimed. This concert recording by Bach Consort Vienna with soloists Andreas Scholl, alto, Hanna Herfurtner and Joowon Chung, soprano and the Salzburg Bach Choir combines instrumentals like the Sonata a quatro in E-flat major "Al Santo Sepolcro", RV 130 and the Concerto in G minor, RV 156 with the liturgical works Stabat Mater, RV 621 and Gloria, RV 589, written for Easter.
Her life reads like the classic Baroque success story: brought up motherless in a Venetian orphanage, maturing into an "unparalleled violin virtuosa", treated as an equal by Antonio Vivaldi: Anna Maria dal Violin. Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln depict the life of this exceptional woman in La Venezia di Anna Maria. All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedal della Pietà. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time. As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the "veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful", as a creature "ascending into Paradise". Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi's instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partner Concerto Köln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi.
Antonio Vivaldi, musical avant-gardist, extravagant violin virtuoso and ingenious composer, was in great demand all over Europe. He travelled to cities including Rome, Prague, Vienna and Amsterdam - but the "red-haired priest" never saw Dresden. Despite this, his music was very much present at the Dresden court: the Saxon royal seat was considered the centre of the German cultivation of Vivaldi. Heinrich E. Grimm has transcribed Vivaldi's most famous programmatic cycle, The Four Seasons, for the organ completely in the spirit of Bach. When recorded on an original instrument, the result is a refreshingly rustic-baroque sound.
The Places A city built on an archipelago of 117 islets, Venice is remarkable in many ways. Unsullied by modern traffic, its buildings retain much of their historic character and something of the magic of the place is reflected in our tour which starts and ends with the lagoon, after visiting the islands of Burano, Murano, Torcello and San Michele. The Music Violinist, priest and most prolific composer, Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and spent most of his life there, associated for much of the time with the Ospedale della Pietà, a charitable institution for girls, with a strong musical tradition. The music for the tour is taken from his collection of twelve concertos, L’Estro Armonico (Harmonic Inspiration), published in Amsterdam in 1711.
Picture format: NTSC 4:3 Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1 Region code: 0 (worldwide) Running time: 57 mins No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)
R E V I E W: Of all the tourist traps I have managed to visit, from China’s Great Wall to Paris via Granada, Rome, Florence and many other venues, Venice is the one that really blew me away. As one of the great Italian city-states of the medieval period it could be said to vie with Florence as a major centre of art and culture in the Renaissance with affluent families supporting the arts as well as wars. Now capital of the Veneto region, it is located at the very head of the Adriatic 4 km from the mainland of Italy to which it is joined by a causeway. It comprises more than one hundred small islands traversed by canals, there is no road traffic. Between the city and the Adriatic are the lagoons, expanses of water sheltered from the open sea by sandbanks and by the longer island of the Lido, the beach resort of the city. The lagoons are divided into Laguna Viva and Laguna Morta, alive and dead, the latter only underwater during spring high tides.
In the Venice lagoons are found several of the major islands included in this musical journey. The start is in the city itself with views of the Grand Canal at dusk and then seen as a boat looks back at the mighty Campanile of St. Marks. On the island of San Michele is the earliest Renaissance church of Venice, dating from the 15th century. This is the cemetery island where the city buried their dead. For some time demand has exceeded supply of space, and bones are removed. Despite this, elegant marble and colourful floral tributes abound with the sight of snow on the ground to remind the viewer that it is cold around here in winter (CH.1). The booklet reminds us that among the more permanent of the graves are those of the great Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, the composer Igor Stravinsky and the American poet Ezra Pound.
The music throughout this journey is taken from Vivaldi’s set of twelve concertos known as L'Estro Armonico, first published in 1711. Himself a violinist of ability, his music receives due string sonority and grace of phrasing by the instrumentalists of Capella Istropolitana under Josef Kopelman. There are serious attempts to match changes of tempi in the various movements to change of venue.
After the cemetery island the journey continues to the still canal waters of Torcello and the Cathedral Santa Maria Assunta (CH.2). Its elegant interior houses a timeless mosaic of Madonna and Child and also an extensive Last Judgement, both from the late twelfth century but having received restoration. The early twelfth century Church of Santa Fosca is only interesting as regards its octagonal shape
The island of Burano (CH.4), the home of the composer Galuppi, has a certain timelessness too, with its visually dated shops, colourful fishing boats and lace-making. However it is the visit to the glass-making factory on Murano, for which the island is famous, that will draw the eye and the stirrings of covetousness (CH.5). To see the production of such things of beauty and intricacy is a delight; to be able to afford to buy one, or even a few of them to adorn one's home would be pleasant indeed.
The journey concludes (CH.6) with a return to Venice itself, past the Arsenal (built 1104) and a brief view of the Academia Bridge and the backwater canals and warehouses. Venice is now a city of industry as well as Grand Palaces such as that of Francesco Da Mosta whose series of programmes for the BBC is now available on DVD (BBCDVD2145). The programmes may lack music, but make up for it in informed narrative and superb photography. The latter is normally a strength of this series but, made in winter as indicated by the snow scenes and leafless trees, a little too much depends on the atmosphere of half-light and that of the lagoon directional buoys.
Vivaldi: Complete Sonatas for 2 Violins and B.C. / L'Archicembalo
Brilliant Classics
CD
$21.99Sep 24, 2021
Antonín Vivaldi (1678-1741) was 27 years old when his Opus 1 collection of 12 sonatas first appeared in print in 1705. Whether or not they represent his earliest acknowledged compositions, they certainly mark the start of a glittering career, bearing already identifiable Vivaldian fingerprints while also drawing on a heritage of Italianate chamber music exemplified by the trio sonatas of Corelli. The form of these early works resembles a suite rather than the three- and four-movement pieces determined by tempo marking which soon became standard practice for the sonatas and concertos composed by Vivaldi in such profusion. In all but three of the Opus 1 Sonatas, a freely developed prelude introduces a sequence of three dance movements such as sarabandes, gigues and gavottes. Solemnity and lively intimacy sit side by side, in an ingenious synthesis of church and chamber modes of expression. Vivaldi’s Opus 1 reaches a grand climax with a free-standing set of variations on the most popular melody in 18th century Italy, ‘La Folia’. This grave and antique chord-sequence of Spanish origin inspired the 20-something composer to handle the familiar instrumental line-up in a bold new way, liberating the bass line from a supporting role and giving some especially brilliant canonical dialogues to the two violins. The sonata demonstrates the degree to which vocal writing inspired Vivaldi’s slow movements and paved the way for his future ventures in opera. The album is completed by two sonatas from the Opus 5 collection published in 1716, and six more sonatas without an opus number (RV 60, 68, 71, 71, 74 and 77 in the Vivaldi catalogue), all scored for the same combination of instruments.
To celebrate his long and fruitful partnership with the Analekta recording label, the great harpsichordist and organist Luc Beausejour delves into his recordings from the past 25 years and proposes three excellent programs. 1 – THE HARPSICHORD Works by Couperin, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Rameau, and Bach organ music on pedal harpsichord. 2 – THE VOICE Featuring Julie Boulianne, Karina Gauvin, Philippe Sly, Shannon Mercer, and Marie-Nicole Lemieux in excerpts from operas, cantatas, and sacred works with Clavecin en concert. 3 – CHAMBER AND ORGAN MUSIC Bach with James Ehnes, Couperin and Rameau with Clavecin en concert, and organ works.
Carnival - Italian Music for Violin & Guitar / Gomyo, Eskelinen
BIS
SACD
$21.99Nov 01, 2019
For her debut album, Karen Gomyo has joined forces with guitarist Ismo Eskelinen in a programme offering fireworks as well as graceful tenderness. A violin virtuoso as well as an expert guitar player, Niccolo Paganini wrote a number of works for the two instruments together. He thus forms a natural point of departure as Gomyo and Eskelinen embark on a journey some hundred years backwards in history, and offer works by three other famous Italian violinist-composers. Neither the violin sonatas by Vivaldi and Locatelli nor Corelli’s celebrated ‘La Follia’ were written specifically with the guitar in mind. They are instead provided with so-called basso continuo accompaniments, to be performed on various chord-playing instruments, such as the harpsichord or the organ. Larger continuo ensembles might also include a lute or a guitar, and it is to this tradition that Ismo Eskelinen harks back as he performs his own realizations of these accompaniments. With one exception, the works by Paganini are on the other hand intended for the combination of violin and guitar – or, in the case of the Grand Sonata, ‘per chitarra e violino’. The centrepiece of the disc is formed by the famous 24th Caprice, provided by the composer with a guitar accompaniment and renamed Variazioni di bravura. Another favourite closes the disc, as Karen Gomyo and Ismo Eskelinen perform their version for violin and guitar of Il carnevale di Venezia, Paganini’s take on a Neapolitan folk song.
Vivaldi: Concertos For Strings / Alessandrini, Concerto Italiano
Tactus
CD
$21.99Jan 01, 2013
Vivaldi’s instrumental output is immense: at present, research has identified no fewer than 478 works bearing the title ‘Concerto’, of which 329 are concertos for solo instrument accompanied by string orchestra and continuo, the violin concertos alone numbering 220. Incomplete as they are, these figures give some idea of the difficulty of attempting even a superficial analysis of the, ‘concerto’ form in Vivaldi’s oeuvre. The variety of structures employed in these works is in proportion to their numbers; and though certain progress has been made in recognising and classifying the compositional styles of the Venetian master, we often find that these ‘rules’ have in fact been laid aside in this or that composition. It must also be remembered that the development of Vivaldi’s style is closely related to the definition and consolidation of a form that finds its roots in works by a slightly earlier generation of composers such as Torelli and Albinoni. As Vivaldi’s career as a composer went on, in fact, we see considerable changes in both form (structure) and in musical invention. Vivaldi’s music was greatly admired by his contemporaries; the large number of imitators of his style who flourished while he was still alive bears witness to his popularity, as does the esteem in which a musician such as Quantz held the Venetian master, indicating his concertos as supreme examples of the form.
The flute occupies an important place amongst all the instruments celebrated by Vivaldi, il prete rosso, in his concerti. All evidence points to the instrument concerned being the recorder, given that it was still extremely popular in Italy at that time. The single publication of concerti that Vivaldi did not compose for the violin (opus X) was marked by him as being for the flute, as were the Concerti da Camera, in which the instrument rivals the violin, oboe and bassoon in virtuosity. Performing the recorder parts on this new release is Frederic de Roos. Frédéric de Roos is the recorder professor at the Royal Conservatorium of Brussels of which he has also been the director since 2003. After obtaining a university degree in musicology, he focused his studies on the recorder repertoire of the 18th century. He regularly presents conferences and seminars on the language of the baroque and gives courses and master classes both in Belgium and abroad.
