|
Untitled Document
|
|
|
VIVALDI, A.: Flute Concertos (Famous) |
|
|
Composer: |
Antonio Vivaldi |
Artist: |
Duke Dobing, Takako Nishizaki, Jiri Stivin, Jiri Valek, Daniel Rothert, Laszlo Kecskemeti, Philippe Pierlot, Jiri Novotny, Deborah Davis, Peter Thalheimer, Michala Petri, Bela Drahos, Eberhard Zummach |
Conductor: |
Jean-Pierre Rampal, Jaroslav Krecek, Jaroslav Krcek, Nicholas Kraemer, Jean Lamon, Oliver Dohnanyi, Richard Edlinger, Stephen Gunzenhauser, Helmut Muller-Bruhl, Werner Erhardt |
Ensemble: |
Follia Instrumental Ensemble, La, Ensemble La Partita, Kremerata Baltica |
Orchestra: |
French National Orchestra, Dall'Arco Chamber Orchestra, Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia, Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Capella Istropolitana, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Stuttgart Collegium Musica Rara, City of London Sinfonia, Concerto Koln |
Label: |
Naxos |
Catalogue No.: |
8.554053 |
Format: |
CD |
Barcode: |
0636943405321 |
|
Antonio Vivaldi
(1678-1741)
Famous Flute Concerti
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 Gabrielis and Monteverdi at the basilica of San Marco, 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 Pietą, 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 Pietą and its music long remained a centre of cultural
pilgrimage. In 1703, the year of his ordination, Vivaldi, known asil prete
rosso, the red priest, from the inherited colour of his hair, was appointed
violin-master of the pupils of the Pietą. 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 Pietą, 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
Pietą 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 Pietą was 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 Pietą 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 Pietą, 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.
|