VIVALDI GLORIA WITH SCO CHORUS (programme note)

26 – 27 MARCH 2020

VIVALDI GLORIA WITH SCO CHORUS –––––

2019/2020 PROGRAMME NOTE SCO.ORG.UK

Edinburgh kindly supported by

The Usher Family

Glasgow proudly sponsored by

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR –––––

CORELLI (1653–1713) Concerto Grosso No 11 in B-flat (1712) Preludio: Largo Allemanda: Allegro Adagio Largo Sarabanda: Largo Giga: Vivace

VIVALDI (1678-1741) Concerto con molti stromenti, RV558 (1740) Allegro molto Andante molto Allegro

ZELENKA (1679-1745) Miserere in C minor (1738) VIVALDI (1756-1791) Concerto per la Solennità di San Lorenzo, RV562 (circa 1716) Andante Adagio Allegro

Gloria (1779) Gloria in excelsis Deo (chorus) Et in terra pax (chorus) Laudamus te (2 soprano) Gratias agimus tibi (chorus) Propter magnam gloriam (chorus) Domine Deus (soprano) Domine, Fili unigenite (chorus) Domine Deus, Agnus Dei (alto and chorus)

––––– Speaking of the ‘splendours’ of the Baroque has become something of a cliché, as though that artistic period produced nothing but lavish opulence, even excess. There was plenty of simplicity, directness, even austerity too, of course – for every Zadok the Priest, a St Matthew Passion.

But at the risk of reinforcing a misjudged cliché, tonight’s concert focuses very much on the ‘splendid’ end of Baroque music, bringing together a trio of concertos of varying degrees of extravagance, plus two equally exuberant choral works.

Ironically, this evening’s opening work – the Concerto Grosso Op 6 No 11 by Arcangelo Corelli – is actually the concert’s most modest. But it also shows where the whole idea of pitting a group of soloists against a larger ensemble came from. A couple of his predecessors had written works for those bipartite forces, but Corelli was the first major figure to coin the term ‘concerto grosso’ – literally ‘big concerto’ – to refer to a work in which virtuosic music from a small group of soloists (the concertino) is contrasted against accompaniment from a larger ensemble (the ripieno).

Corelli came from the generation before Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, working mainly in Rome for several influential patrons. And though he’s known to have been prolific, not even 100 pieces by him now survive – perhaps because he was something of a perfectionist, and only allowed his very best pieces to be published.

Quoniam tu solus sanctus (chorus)

The Concerto Grosso No 11 is the penultimate work in his Op 6 set, all of which is written for a concertino group of

Cum Sancto Spiritu (chorus)

two violins, cello and continuo, plus ripieno

Qui tollis peccata mundi (chorus) Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris (alto)

strings. Following a stately opening Preludio, the Concerto moves on to a bold Allemanda that puts the concertino cellist through their paces. Following a very brief Adagio and plangent Andante largo, it continues with a Sarabanda full of contrasts between concertino and ripieno groups, closing with a bouncing, bounding Giga.

Talking of coining terms, it was Antonio Vivaldi who came up with the description ‘concerto con molti istromenti’ (literally ‘concerto with several instruments’) for about 30 of his 500 total concertos. And those works, written a generation later than Corelli’s, are far more lavish and elaborate, combining winds, strings and other instruments in often large concertino groups against his string ripieno accompaniment.

He usually created them for special events: RV 558, for example, was probably written to celebrate the visit of Prince Frederick Christian of Poland to the Ospedale della Pietà (the Venetian girls’ orphanage where Vivaldi worked) in 1740. And its elaborate instrumentation needs some explaining. It’s written for two recorders, two mandolins, two chalumeaux (a forerunner of the clarinet), two theorbos (or bass lutes), a solo cello and two violins ‘in tromba marina’. These last instruments, and in particular their nauticalsounding qualifier, remain something of a mystery even today. It may be that Vivaldi was suggesting his violinists should emulate an archaic tromba marina, a single-stringed instrument whose distinctive buzz gave it a horn-like sound. But there’s no consensus as to how that should actually be achieved.

Arcangelo Corelli

movement returns to episodes for pairs of soloists, though Vivaldi mixes things up quite a bit more here, before a decisive unison ending.

Jan Dismas Zelenka was born in Prague but worked for most of his life at the Court of Dresden, and is a little-known figure, though more and more attention is being paid to his often quite remarkably idiosyncratic music, which blends influences from church music, his native Bohemian folk music, Italian opera and more. JS Bach, working down the road in Leipzig, was one of the few contemporaries to recognise his talents.

Vivaldi showcases his soloists in pairs in a bustling, stomping, richly scored opening movement, before a more yearning slow movement with a poignant melody in triplets

His quirky style is nowhere more evident than in his opulent 1738 choral setting of the Miserere text, a psalm pleading for God’s mercy. The work follows a six-movement, arch-like form, beginning and ending with urgent, pulsing, restless music, full of drama, before secondly (and penultimately), a brighter fugue presents an astonishing, seemingly endless tapestry of intertwining lines. In the middle come a movement for solo soprano full of surprising chromatic runs and tumbling arpeggios, then a brief, demonstrative, mainly chordal movement with striding arpeggios from violins and

for violin and mandolin soloists. Its closing

violas.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi

Jan Zelenka

Vivaldi’s RV 562 is another opulent ‘concerto con molti instromenti’, though more modest than the one we heard earlier, using just violin, two oboes, two horns, cello and strings. It comes (probably) from 1716, and was (probably) written for the mass of the Feast of St Lawrence celebrated at the Ospedale della Pietà that year: Vivaldi’s habit was to showcase the considerable talents of the Ospedale’s young players in a short performance of instrumental music after the mass had ended. The Concerto’s

unknown. The score was lost until the 1920s, and although it was resurrected in an ‘elaborated’ version by Italian composer Alfredo Casella in 1939, it wasn’t until 1957 that Vivaldi’s original was published and performed.

arresting opening is a call to attention that stays stubbornly in D major for a remarkable 16 bars, before suddenly bursting into flamboyant life as the solo instruments come into their own in a bustling Allegro. A solo violin melody floats over the top of the brief second movement, before a graceful, dancelike closing movement, where another long, written-out solo cadenza puts the violinist in the spotlight.

Vivaldi’s Gloria RV589 seems to encapsulate the notion of Baroque splendour with its bright, sunny mood and its confident, elaborate writing, all entirely in keeping with its celebratory function of praising God and Christ. So it’s strange to think that, between Vivaldi’s death in 1741 and the early 20th

optimistic opening of its first movement, ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ (which returns in its penultimate movement, ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’), there’s an immediate sense of grandeur and occasion to the piece, which works through solo and choral movements in music that often wouldn’t be out of place in an opera house. Vivaldi’s closing movement, ‘Con Sancto Spiritu’, is actually an arrangement of the end of a Gloria composed in 1708 by the elder Veronese composer Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, who Vivaldi held in high esteem. Nonetheless, Vivaldi improves on Ruggieri’s original, adding new trumpet parts and emphasising the role of the orchestra, and thereby bringing his Gloria to a suitably splendorous conclusion.

century, the piece was almost entirely

©David Kettle

We know little about the piece’s origins, however – other than that it was probably written around 1715 and was almost certainly intended for performance at the Ospedale della Pietà. From the vigorous,

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