New Vivaldi flute concerto recorded: hear an excerpt

The Vivaldi flute concerto discovered last year in the National Archives of Scotland is now available for download, having been recorded by Gramophone Award-winning ensemble La Serenissima and Baroque flautist Katy Bircher. But if you think it’s exciting to hear a new work by an old master for the first time, compare that to the thrill – not to mention pressure – of actually being the first to play it.

It certainly doesn’t happen very often. Most of Vivaldi’s 20-or-so concertos are staples of the flute repertoire, and have been performed and recorded countless times. But when the composer’s Il Gran Mogol flute concerto was discovered last year, it fell to Bircher to give its modern premiere. “I felt very honoured to introduce the piece to our world,” she told Gramophone, “but I also felt a heightened sense of responsibility.”

The manuscript, discovered by musicologist Andrew Woolley, was thought to have made its way to Edinburgh via the flute-playing nobleman Lord Robert Kerr (son of the third Marquess of Lothian), who probably acquired it on a Grand Tour of Europe in the early 1700s. Woolley quickly made an edition of it, which, apart from the inclusion of the missing second violin part, is, as far as Bircher can tell, faithful to the original manuscript. “He doesn’t seem to have edited the flute part. There are some trills, which you would expect, and he’s added a few slurs, which just follow a pattern that’s already been established by Vivaldi, but the ornaments are all my own.” (Article continues below)