If you have forgotten how exciting the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) can be, take a moment and listen to this concert performance of the Violin Concerto in G minor, RV 317, featuring French violinist Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge. As this clip demonstrates, brilliant, crackling virtuosity and searing drama lie at the heart of Vivaldi’s music.
In addition to composing more than five hundred concertos, ninety solo sonatas, and dozens of choral works, Vivaldi wrote at least forty-six operas. In the G minor Concerto’s second movement (Largo), which opens with a quietly wrenching dissonance, you can hear an operatic sense of melancholy and lament.
Julien Chauvin founded Le Concert de la Loge, a period instrument ensemble, in 2015. The group attempts to revive Concert de la Loge Olympique, the esteemed French orchestra founded in 1783, which commissioned and premiered Haydn’s “Paris” Symphonies. This performance took place in September, 2017 at the Festival d’Ambronay: