Concerti per flauto e flautino Dorothee Oberlinger Antonio Vivaldi Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca 10 English ⁄ Français ⁄ Deutsch ⁄ Italiano ⁄ Tracklist Menu Concertos for Recorders by Dorothee Oberlinger When, in 1741, Antonio Vivaldi was buried in a communal grave in Vienna, it had already been some time that the composer, formerly regarded as a pioneer, was no longer men- tioned. Throughout Europe, numerous famous composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, had taken his concertos as models and were desperate to procure the editions of his latest works, as was the case for L’Estro armonico. Yet, in the years leading up to his death, the ‘Red Priest’ was forced to part with a number of his compositions, selling them, for ex- ample, to the Ospedale della Pietà, where he had long been active as maestro dei concerti. By the time he died, the style of the renowned composer and violinist, from whom individuals and theatres had been anxious to commission works in the past, was no longer in vogue. Vivaldi sank into oblivion for some two hundred years, and it was only in 1940 that his oeuvre began to be rediscovered. This exploration continues up to the present day, with 2 innumerable recordings and research by pioneers such as Federico Maria Sardelli1 having been carried out in recent years. Today, a recently-rediscovered concerto for flautino (RV 312R) is again part of the repertoire, and work goes on. All the recorder concertos on this CD – chamber concertos or solo concertos – were written expressly for flauto or flautino and show the imagination, delicacy, freshness, vir- tuosity and sometimes even melancholy, which Vivaldi put into his writing for this instru- ment. We have intentionally chosen tuning at 440 Hz since, in Venice, in Vivaldi’s time, tuning was higher than in neighbouring musical centres such as Rome, for example, where, at times, one even played at 392 Hz. With this high tuning, the sound of the gentle gut strings becomes clearer and more brilliant. Amongst other pieces, the Chamber Concerto RV 101 and Recorder Concerto RV 442 constitute the raw material later brought together in Opus 10, the popular collection for transverse flute that was printed in 1728 by the publisher Le Cène in Amsterdam. The 1 Vivaldi's Music for Flute and Recorder, Ashgate, Aldershot 2007. English beginning of the Allemande of the Violin Sonata RV 4 is at the origin of the first solo pas- sages of the Chamber Concerto and its later version for flute and strings, Op. 10 No. 6. The Concerto in F major RV 442, ‘con tutti gl’istromenti sordini’, evokes an atmosphere of Vivaldi borrowing from his own music; he transposed all the movements of this Con- certo (later, in the version for transverse flute, Op. 10 No. 5 / RV 434) into as many da capo arias in his vocal music: the first movement in Teuzzone (I, 4), the second in Tigrane (II, 4) and the third in Giustino (III, 7). In the Turin score, one finds a marking, probably brought to the attention of the copyists of Opus 10, whereby the second movement should be trans- posed into G minor, for F minor does not show off the traverse flute to best advantage. In addition, the manuscript contains an earlier unfinished version, scratched out but still legible, of the second movement (a cantabile), which we found appealing to place at the end of the CD (track 17). Moreover, the same wintry colours and calm mood of Concerto RV 442 are found in the Violin Concerto RV 270 Il Riposo / Per il S. Natale, with constant ‘violini sordini’. With its scoring for two violins, recorder and basso continuo, the Concerto in A minor RV 108 recalls the 24 concerti di flauto di diversi autori (1725) that are currently preserved at the Conservatorio di Musica S. Pietro a Majella in Naples. This concerto occupies a 3 special place in Vivaldi’s catalogue, being the only one of its kind. In the first movement, the violins and flute toss a motif in anapaests back and forth; the last movement recalls a tarantella. In the first and third movements, by indicating variants, Vivaldi leaves open the possibility of also performing the concerto on the oboe. The two highly virtuoso concertos for flautino – RV 443 and RV 444 in C major – re- quire more vivacity and brightness from a violin than from a woodwind. They were prob- ably written for a particular musician and date from around the same time (1728-29). In the manuscript of Concerto RV 443, the annotation ‘alla quarta bassa’ in the margin poses a riddle for researchers, as is so often the case, leaving a doubt as to the choice (frequently admitted with concert artists) of a sopranino recorder in F (cf. also Talbot). This is perhaps a remark inserted at a later time, offering the flautist the possibility of also interpreting the Concerto in G major (a fourth lower) on the soprano recorder in C, lest the very high passages sound too strident. That is perhaps precisely the satisfying solution for the second movement, a siciliano with developed ornamentation and long runs of a broad range! The secret cannot be entirely disclosed, but we found it interesting to compare the Menu sound between the Concerto RV 443 with soprano recorder in C and the Concerto RV 444 with the sopranino recorder. Concerti della natura were a theme willingly chosen by Antonio Vivaldi, who had a pro- nounced taste for eloquent titles and programme music. The imitation of Nature, a central theme in French art at the beginning of the 18th century, was still intertwined, in Italy, with the representation of Man as the centre of Nature. ‘Alla rustica’ idylls imitated a peasant atmosphere but under the distanced, artistic and transfiguring regard of a person of higher social rank. Alongside the Concerto in D major RV 95 La Pastorella, whose rustic charm we have emphasised by resorting to a hurdy-gurdy in the first and last movements, and whose tune in the middle movement sounds like a musette, another programmatic concerto, for strings alone, is included in the programme: Concerto RV 163 in B major, Conca, com- posed after 1727. This is a tribute by Vivaldi to the compositional style cultivated in the Northern Alps (e.g., by J.H.F. Biber and J.J. Walther), a particularly important reference and frequently encountered in his programme works. 4 The conca is a large seashell used as a primitive natural trumpet and thanks to which navigators were warned of storms. In this concerto, it is no more possible to disregard the signal of the shell, which resembles even more a unison trumpet, than it is to ignore the rumbling storm. A simple motif (B-flat - F - B-flat) runs through the whole work and shows how Vivaldi carried out particularly ‘radical and imaginative formal experimentation’ here (cf. Talbot). Owing to his contacts within the Austro-Czech aristocracy, it should not be excluded that he might have been instructed to immortalise here the Wettertrompete (or ‘storm trumpet’, a sort of foghorn) typical of the Czech regions (cf. Talbot). The second movement of the Conch Concerto, in typical song form, takes on a new aspect here: in the context of the recorder concertos, with the solo voice composed by Giorgio Fava for flautino fitting perfectly into the framework. Bibliography Michael Talbot, Vivaldi, Schirmer, New York 1993 Michael Talbot, ‘Vivaldi’s Conch Concerto’, Informazioni e Studi Vivaldiani, 5, 1984 Winfried Michel, Preface to: 3 concerti per flautino, Münster, 1999 Federico Maria Sardelli, Vivaldi’s Music for Flute and Recorder, Ashgate, Aldershot 2007 Menu Français Concertos pour flûtes à bec par Dorothee Oberlinger Lorsqu’en 1741, à Vienne, Antonio Vivaldi fut inhumé dans une fosse commune, le silence s’était fait depuis quelques temps déjà autour de ce compositeur autrefois pionnier. Dans toute l’Europe, de nombreux compositeurs célèbres, et parmi eux Johann Sebastian Bach, avaient pris pour modèle ses concertos et s’étaient arraché les éditions de ses œuvres, comme ce fut le cas pour L’Estro Armonico. Le « Prete Rosso » fut pourtant acculé, dans les années qui précédèrent sa mort, à se séparer de nombre de ses compositions, les vendant par exemple à l’Ospedale della Pietà, où il avait longtemps été actif en tant que « maestro dei concerti ». Le compositeur et violoniste célèbre, autour duquel les comman- ditaires et les théâtres se pressaient autrefois, mourut à une époque où son style n’était plus demandé. Vivaldi tomba dans l’oubli deux cents ans durant, et ce n’est qu’en 1940 que s’amorça la redécouverte de son œuvre, qui se poursuit aujourd’hui encore : de nombreux enre- 5 gistrements et travaux de recherche pionniers tels que ceux de Federico Maria Sardelli1 ont justement été réalisés au cours des dernières années. Un concerto pour flautino ré- cemment redécouvert (RV 312R) fait aujourd’hui presque à nouveau partie du répertoire et les recherches continuent… Tous les concertos pour flûte à bec de ce CD – qu’il s’agisse de concertos de chambre ou de concertos solos – sont écrits expressément pour flauto, ou flautino et montrent avec quelles imagination, délicatesse, fraîcheur, virtuosité, et parfois même mélancolie Vivaldi écrit pour cet instrument. Nous avons choisi tout à fait consciemment l’accord à 440 Hz, puisqu’à Venise, au temps de Vivaldi, l’accord était plus élevé que dans les centres musicaux voisins, comme par exemple à Rome, où l’on a même par moments joué à 392 Hz. Avec cet accord élevé, le son des douces cordes de boyaux devient plus clair et plus brillant.