Luogo e data di registrazione		Doopsgezinde Kerk, Haarlem (Netherlands)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Heinrich Weritz
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken - 6.42355 AW - (1 LP) - durata 47' 20" - (p) 1978 - Analogico
	Edizione "Reference" CD		Tedec - 8.43630 ZS - (1 CD) - LC 3706 - durata 47' 20" - (c) 1987 - AAD
	Cover		Foto mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
	Note		-

Antonio Vivaldi’s significance as a composer is scarcely in doubt any longer: after all, few musicians have staged such an impressive comeback as the prete rosso, or Red Priest, as Vivaldi was known on account of the colour of his hair. Yet the rediscovery of the works of Venice‘s most famous maestro di violino, about whose turbulent life the dramatist Carlo Goldoni reports briefly in his memoirs (Goldoni valued him more as a virtuoso violinist than as a composer), began inauspiciously, with many of his concertos, which are all of a similar basic type, eliciting little interest or even outright rejection. To quote Walter Kolneder, “it was the composers least substantial works that most incensed Vivaldi‘s critics". It was only when audiences became acquainted with many of his other pieces, including the programmatical Le quattro stagioni (Four Seasons) from Il cimento dell'armonia e dell’inventione op. 8, written around 1725, as well as a number of the composers operas and sacred Works, that this picture was finally corrected. The Violin Concerto in D major, RV 208 is also known as Il grosso Mogul, a title which, probably intended as a joke, is found in only a single copy. Delightful though this name may be, the work itself is one of the least well known of Vivaldi’s many violin concertos. The opening Allegro is thematically simple but virtuoso in style, and is followed by a recitative-like slow movement in the relative (Vivaldi was particularly fond of B minor), with a deeply expressive melodic line. The final Allegro is dance-like in character. The Work is notable not least for the fact that the solo instrument is supported either by the continuo alone or by a loose accompaniment of tutti violins. Whether the Sinfonia in B minor, RV 169 should be accounted a concerto or an example of programme music must remain an open question. Its nickname Al Santa Sepolcro refers to the tradition of reproducing the Holy Sepulchre in churches during Holy Week. Vivaldi’s predilection for chromatic writing, the anguished and solemn mood of the opening section (Adagio molto) and the thematic reminiscences of the Adagio molto in the second section (Allegro, ma poco) go far beyond the average concertante writing of many similar works. Also in B minor is the Cello Concerto, RV 424. Of Vivaldi's twenty-seven works for the instrument this is one of the least well known. The composer's remarkable command of cello technique and the nature of the writing for an instrument still in the early stages of its development may be attributable to his acquaintance with the Italian cellist Francischello. The heart of this three-movement work is its central panel, a Largo which, although only sixteen bars long, is notable for the way in which a simple idea is richly ornamented, while at the same time affording an oasis of calm. The virtuoso demands placed on the solo instrument in the final Allegro are even more formidable than those found in the opening movement. “With the exception of a handful of weaker pieces," Walter Kolneder writes, Vivaldi’s cello concertos are “of the highest musical quality. In the technical demands that they place upon their performer, they reflect the most important stage in the history of the instrument and the manner in which it is played". Vivaldi wrote a total of twenty concertos for solo oboe, strings and harpsichord. According to Kolneder, the Oboe Concerto in A minor, RV 461 may have been inspired by the high level of woodwind playing at the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Duke of Lorraine and Count Morzin of Bohemia and is a particularly fine example of Vivaldi’s inventive skill at writing for a concertante solo instrument. The opening Allegro non molto will surprise the listener with its rhythmic vitality and succinctness of expression, while the following Larghetto in C major exploits the Scotch snap, a syncopated figuration very popular in its day. Except in the opening and closing bars of the tutti, the orchestra is limited to violins and viola, which provide the soloist with modest support. In the final Allegro, as in so many other concertos by Vivaldi, it is the concertante style that predominates. As in the previous concerto, this final movement places greater technical demands on the soloist than the opening Allegro. Like the B minor Sinfonia, the Sonata in E flat major for two violins, viola and continuo, RV 130 has the alternative title of Al Santo Sepolcro. It, too, is in two movements, a Largo molto and Allegro, ma poco, that are stylistically similar to some of the early works of Viennese Classicism. Indeed, many of the features of Vivaldi’s concertos or sinfonias (the two terms were used more or less interchangeably by the composer) anticipate a development that was later to find expression in the Classical bithematic sonata. A model of self-contained unity, the sonata’s second movement is a fine example of this technique. Manuscripts and copies of Vivaldi’s instrumental works have been found in a number of North European libraries in recent decades. The Concerto in C minor, RV app.17 for oboe and violin was discovered in Lund (Sweden) and published by David Lasocki in 1973. Cast in the form of a sonata da chiesa, it may remind its listeners, at least at an initial hearing, of a concerto by Corelli or Handel. Particularly noteworthy is the urgency of the second movement (Allegro) and, as so often with Vivaldi, the hannonic sophistication of the Adagio in G minor, which serves, so to speak, as a dominant-key introduction to the gigue-like final movement. Helmuth Wirths Translation: Stewart Spencer