This 2002 recording features cellists Christina Mahler and Allen Whear with Jeanne Lamon and the Toronto-based Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra: During this time, the violinist and composer was teacher and music director at the Ospedale della Pietà, the legendary convent, orphanage and music school. Vivaldi composed the Concerto for Two Cellos in Venice around 1720. As the musicologist and Italian Baroque specialist Michael Talbot writes, the “frenetic finale, see-sawing in rhythm and tonality alike, keeps one on the edge of one’s seat.” It is operatic yet ultimately rooted in the intimacy of the trio sonata. Set in sombre G minor, this is music which inhabits a magical, veiled world of nocturnal shadows. The second movement is a melancholy duet. Immediately, we are swept into a haunting and tempestuous drama. The first movement begins not with the standard tutti ritornello but with the two solo instruments taking center stage with a vigorous conversation in thirds. Out of the composer’s nearly 500 surviving concerti (30 of which feature the cello), it is the only “double” concerto for the instrument. It makes for a fitting opening to this evening’s concert.The Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, RV 531 is one of Antonio Vivaldi’s most intensely dramatic and convention-defying works. The double bass plays a walking line in the central Adagio movement, with the upper strings sustaining tones. The outer Allegro movements are tumultuous and fiery, with a strutting syncopation and rushing melodies. The fiery Concerto for Strings in G minor, RV 156, is a full concerto with no featured soloists. He also composed concertos for cello, viola d’amore, flute, oboe, bassoon, and groups of solo instruments.
His most famous concerto, The Four Seasons, forms part of the collection The Contest of Harmony and Invention, which is one of seven such collections published during his lifetime. He was a prolific writer, having composed around 500 concertos in addition to a number of pieces for the church and the theater. Despite his severe asthma, he went on several taxing journeys starting in 1718 which helped to cement his reputation as one of the preeminent musicians of baroque Europe.
In the early 1700s, when most Italian composers were known for their operas, Vivaldi held a unique position, achieving fame as a creator of orchestral works. Concert Notes Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in G minor, RV 156
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