Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)
Cello Concerti Vol. 3
Concerto in B Flat Major, RV 423
Concerto in C Minor, RV 402
Concerto in A Minor, RV 418
Concerto in D Major, RV 403
Concerto in B Minor, RV 424
Concerto in D Minor, RV 407
Concerto in E Minor (with bassoon), RV 409
(directed from the keyboards by Nicholas Kraemer)
Once virtually forgotten, Antonio Vivaldi now enjoys a reputation that equals the international fame he enjoyed in his heyday. Born in Venice in 1678, the son of a barber who was himself to win distinction as a violinist in the service of the great basilica of San Marco, where the Gabrielis and Monteverdi had presided, he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1703. At the same time he established himself as a violinist of remarkable ability. A later visitor to Venice described his playing in the opera-house in 1715, his use of high positions so that his fingers almost touched the bridge of the violin, leaving little room for the bow, and his contrapuntal cadenza, a fugue played at great speed. The experience, the observer added, was too artificial to be enjoyable. Nevertheless Vivaldi was among the most famous virtuosi of the day, as well as being a prolific composer of music that won wide favour at home and abroad and exercised a far-reaching influence on the music of others.
For much of his life Vivaldi was intermittently associated with the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the four famous foundations in Venice for the education of orphan, illegitimate or indigent girls, a select group of whom were trained as musicians. Venice attracted, then as now, many foreign tourists, and the Pietà and its music long remained a centre of cultural pilgrimage. In 1703, the year of his ordination, Vivaldi, known as il prete rosso, the red priest, from the inherited colour of his hair, was appointed violin-master of the pupils of the Pietà. The position was subject to annual renewal by the board of governors, whose voting was not invariably in Vivaldi's favour, particularly as his reputation and consequent obligations outside the orphanage increased. In 1709 he briefly left the Pietà, to be reinstated in 1711. In 1716 he was again removed, to be given, a month later, the title Maestro de' Concerti, director of instrumental music. A year later he left the Pietà for a period of three years spent in Mantua as Maestro di Cappella da Camera to Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, the German nobleman appointed by the Emperor in Vienna to govern the city.
By 1720 Vivaldi was again in Venice and in 1723 the relationship with the Pietà was officially resumed, apparently on a less formal basis. Vivaldi was commissioned to write two new concertos a month, and to rehearse and direct the performance of some of them. The arrangement allowed him to travel and he spent some time in Rome, and indirectly sought possible appointment in Paris through dedicating compositions to Louis XV, although there was no practical result. Vienna seemed to offer more, with the good will of Charles VI, whose inopportune death, when Vivaldi attempted in old age to find employment there, must have proved a very considerable disappointment.
In 1730 Vivaldi visited Bohemia; in 1735 he was appointed again to the position of Maestro de' Concerti at the Pietà and in 1738 he appeared in Amsterdam, where he led the orchestra at the centenary of the Schouwburg Theatre. By 1740, however, Venice had begun to grow tired of Vivaldi, and shortly after the performance of concertos specially written as part of a serenata for the entertainment of the young Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony his impending departure was announced to the governors of the Pietà, who were asked, and at first refused, to buy some of his concertos.
The following year Vivaldi travelled to Vienna, where he arrived in June, and had time to sell some of the scores he had brought with him, before succumbing to some form of stomach inflammation. He died a month to the day after his arrival and was buried the same day with as little expense as possible. As was remarked in Venice, he had once been worth 50,000 ducats a year, but through his extravagance he died in poverty.
Much of Vivaldi's expenditure was presumably in the opera-house. He was associated from 1714 with the management of the San Angelo Theatre, a second-rate house which nevertheless began to win a name for decent performances, whatever its economies in quality and spectacle. Vivaldi is known to have written some 46 operas, and possible some 40 more than this; he was also involved as composer and entrepreneur in their production in other houses in Italy. It was his work in the opera-house that led to Benedetto Marcello's satirical attack on him in 1720 in Il teatro alla moda, on the frontispiece of which Aldaviva, alias Vivaldi, is seen as an angel with a fiddle, wearing a priest's hat, standing on the tiller with one foot raised, as if to beat time. It has been suggested that "on the fiddle" had similar connotations in Italian to those it retains in English. Vivaldi had his enemies.
Vivaldi left 27 concertos for cello, string orchestra and basso continuo. Seven of these, three of them in the earliest datable manuscript versions, were preserved in the library of an amateur cellist, Count Rudolf Franz Erwein von Schönborn, at Wiesentheid. Three of the concertos were copied by Johann Philipp Homeck, in the service of the brother of Count Rudolf and in Venice during the winter of 1708-1709. Other music was bought from Venice through the agency of Regaznig, representative of the Elector of Mainz, uncle of the Schönborns, in Venice, between 1708 and 1713. Other concertos are in the collection of the Turin Biblioteca Nazionale, with one, RV 404, from Schwerin in the Mecklenburgische Landesbibliothek.
Three of the concertos here recorded are from the library of the Graf von Schönborn, the Concerto in B flat major, RV 423, the Concerto in C minor, RV 402, and the Concerto in D minor, RV 407. The first of these starts with well defined figuration, an emphatic ritornello that punctuates the discursions of the solo instrument. There is a brief tutti opening to the D minor Largo, while the final Allegro is in characteristic style. The second, the Concerto in C minor, has a strongly characterized ritornello theme in which the first violin is imitated by the second, before the solo entry, accompanied by basso continuo. The G minor Adagio is a gentle triplet rhythm solo for the cello, after a tutti start, and the solo cello elaborates the bass line before its first solo entry in the final Allegro. The third of the Schönborn concertos, the Concerto in D minor, allows the soloist double-stopped reinforcement of the bass line before the solo entry proper, with its passage-work and wide-spaced intervals. The G minor Largo, marked sempre piano, offers a descending chromatic ground as accompaniment for the solo cello and this is followed by a final movement in 12/8, its gigue-like compound rhythms continued in the solo part.
The opening ritornello of the Concerto in A minor, RV 418, makes use of descending and ascending arpeggio figuration, continuing this pattern in the accompaniment of the solo cello. The slow movement is in the form of a D minor aria, while arpeggios again feature largely in the solo and orchestral parts of the final Allegro. The Concerto in D major, RV 403, has a ritornello that is in dotted rhythm, while the solo part makes considerable use of the descending scale. The same dotted rhythm continues in the D major Andante e spiritoso, in triple time, for solo cello and basso continuo. 3/8 is replaced by 2/4 in the final Allegro.
The Concerto in B minor, RV 424, has a ritornello based on alternation of tonic and dominant harmonies, before the varied rhythms of the solo cello, which is accompanied only by the basso continuo in the second movement Largo. The ritornello theme first proposed in the final Allegro is taken up and elaborated by the soloist, who later proceeds to a passage of double-stopping and to triplet rhythms, before the final reappearance of the ritornello.
Vivaldi wrote some three dozen or so concertos for the bassoon. In his Concerto in E minor, RV 409, he makes use of solo cello and solo bassoon in an original structure that allows the two solo instruments a series of Adagio entries, punctuated by the Allegro molto ritornello of the strings of the orchestra. The procedure is reversed in the E minor second movement, where the solo instruments have a series of Allegro passages, interspersed with brief tutti Adagios. The last movement is in the more expected form of a uniform Allegro, in which an orchestral ritornello starts the movement and frames a series of solo entries.
Raphael Wallfisch
Raphael Wallfisch was born in London into a distinguished musical family and studied with Amaryllis Fleming, Amadeo Baldovino, Derek Simpson and Gregor Piatigorsky. While studying with Piatigorsky he was honoured to play chamber music with the great Jascha Heifetz.
Since winning the Gaspar Cassado International Cello Competition in Florence at the age of 24, Raphael Wallfisch has given concerts across the world. In Europe he has performed in Austria, East and West Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark. He regularly plays in Australia and in 1990 undertook a four-week tour for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before going on to make his début in Hong Kong. He also makes frequent visits to the USA and Canada.
Raphael Wallfisch is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and Professor and Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music.
City of London Sinfonia
The City of London Sinfonia was founded in 1971 by the conductor Richard Hickox and has been acclaimed as one of Britain's most distinguished orchestras. With Hickox as artistic director and Andrew Watkinson as leader and director, the City of London Sinfonia appears at many of the leading English festivals and concert venues, makes regular broadcasts on radio and television and has an enviable recording repertoire. The Sinfonia also promotes its own series of autumn and spring concerts in London at the Barbican and South Bank Centres and has a significant reputation in the recording studio with many successful titles recorded for Chandos, EMI, Decca, Hyperion, Virgin Classics and Naxos.
Nicholas Kraemer
Nicholas Kraemer began his career as a harpsichordist, playing with such groups as the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the English Baroque Soloists, extending his activities to conducting from the harpsichord, notably with the English Chamber Orchestra in the 1970s, and a subsequent career as a conductor. He was Associate Conductor from 1983 to 1985 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and from 1986 to 1992 Artistic Director of the Irish Chamber Orchestra and is currently Artistic Director of the English Bach Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Manchester Camerata. Nicholas Kraemer conducted at Glyndebourne from 1980 to 1983 and was the first musical director of Opera 80, now English Touring Opera. Guest engagements have brought appearances in Germany and in Vienna and his work in Handel opera includes recent performances of Belshazzar with the Raglan Baroque Players, an ensemble he established in 1978, at the 1994 Bath Festival, for which he was programme director. He has conducted the operas of Handel and of Monteverdi in Paris, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Marseilles and in 1994 made his English National Opera début with The Magic Flute.
Harpsichord after Blanchet (c. 1750) by David Rubio.
Chamber Organ in 18th century tradition by Peter Collins.
Pitch A=442hz
Keyboard adviser: Maurice Cochrane
