Let’s finish the week with a brief but alluring musical snapshot.
This is the beautiful second movement (Andante) from Vivaldi’s Concerto for Strings in F Major, RV 136, completed around 1730. It’s an excerpt from Vivaldi: Arie ritrovate, a 2008 album I featured in last Friday’s post. Violinist Stefano Montanari joins the Ravenna-based baroque orchestra, Accademia Bizantina, led by Ottavio Dantone.
I love the way this music draws us in with a sense of majestic, flowing, inevitability. Its roving bass line is constantly sliding in unpredictable new harmonic directions. Listen to the imitative dialogue between voices and the intimate warmth of the final bars:
Vivaldi: Arie ritrovate presents some of Vivaldi’s recently rediscovered operatic gems. The Concerto for Violins was included because of the second movement’s thematic links to the aria Abbia respiro il cor from La Silvia, RV 734. Here it is performed by contralto Sonia Prina:
Recordings
- Vivaldi: Arie ritrovate, Sonia Prima, Ottavio Dantone, Accademia Bizantina iTunes