In 1740, Frederick Christian, Prince Elector of Saxony, visited Venice. For any cultivated grand tourist, one or more of the city’s four Ospedali would almost certainly have featured on the itinerary; so the prince, a music-lover, understandably headed towards the Pieta, the establishment with the greatest musical reputation, and where the internationally renowned Vivaldi taught. There, in March 1740, he attended a concert given in his honour by Vivaldi’s musically accomplished female students. Some of the evening’s entertainment has been lost but four concertos by Vivaldi have been preserved and it is these, with the addition of two others from his famous Op. 8 collection, which provide the programme on Andrew Manze’s new disc.
In one respect or another all the pieces here are vintage Vivaldi and, taken together, they offer a fair conspectus of his expressive range, his feeling for instrumental colour and his originality. Three of the four works performed have become firm favourites among twentieth-century audiences: the Concertos for viola d’amore and lute (RV540), for violin, echo violins and strings (RV552) and con molti istromenti (RV558). The fourth item, a wonderfully spirited Sinfonia (RV149), Vivaldi wrote as an introduction to a serenata, now lost, by another composer.
The performances are splendid. Manze has a pleasing awareness of the inherent poesy and fantasy in Vivaldi’s music and has the technique to make the most of it. I derived particular enjoyment from La tempesta di mare and the tenderly expressive Concerto for viola d’amore and lute – I like the gently swung rhythm of the sublime Largo just as I admire Manze’s ornamented repeats – but readers are unlikely to be disappointed by anything here. Just occasionally I found the upper string sound a little thin and undernourished but the orchestra are generally on good form, responsive to Vivaldi and Manze alike. These aspects can be savoured above all in the C major Concerto with its treble recorders, tenor chalumeaux, mandolins, theorbos, violins, cello and string tutti. Vivaldi was clearly intent on showing off the diverse, multicoloured musical talents of his pupils in this rhythmically infectious piece.
In summary, this is a delightful, well-conceived programme, executed with refinement of taste and technique. But I only agree in part with Manze’s analogy of Vivaldi’s music with that of his Venetian painter contemporary, Tiepolo. The light-heartedness, the colour, the decoration and the splendour are shared qualities, but perhaps we need to look further afield, and even further on in time, to find visual art that evokes or mirrors the sensuous contours of Vivaldi’s solo violin writing and the acute, sometimes autumnal sensibility of his slow movements.'