Vivaldi — Camera Concerts

Antonio Vivaldi was a composer not only of violin concertos and operas. This Venetian, forgotten for a century and a half, also wrote chamber works. Works for small ensembles were included in the program of the meeting with Il Giardino Armonico, during which the artists will perform in duet, tertet and quartet (not counting the basso continuo). They will be led by the leader of the formation and frequent guest of the NFM, flutist Giovanni Antonini.

It is difficult to say to what genre the songs that make up the program of this evening belong. Are these concerts without a ripino group (orchestra)? Or perhaps an attempt to transfer the principle of the idea of musical “competition”, along with the three-part form, into the world of small compositions dominated by the polyphonic sonata genre? Of the twenty works of this kind left to posterity, six were chosen for the occasion. In addition, the program included the Sonata in A minor, which, despite the four-part arrangement, also resembles a concert stylistically. This is an example of the formal experiments conducted by the most famous of the composers-priests with hair according to the stereotype suggesting a fiery temperament.

Three of the works presented, namely “Il Gardellino” (“The Goldfinch”) and “La tempesta di mare” (“Sea Storm”) and Concerto in G major RV 101, are actually flute concertos — so important is the role of the instrument on which Antonini will play. Vivaldi himself later transcribed them for flute with orchestra and published as part of his Op. 10. The monographer of the Venetian artist, Karl Heller, who died in 2025, claimed that the elements of the repertoire of that evening constitute the first swallows of homophonic chamber music of a new type. They were created in the mature period of their author's work, perhaps intended for the pupils of the Ospedale della Pietà.