Live at Ashburton Arts Centre on Tuesday 29 October 2024

Rodolfo Richter, Violin
Pierre Joubert, Violin
William Carter, Lute

Programme
I. Trio Sonata in B-flat Major RV 77, Antonio Vivaldi [1678-1741]
Allegro/ Andante/ Allegro
Tutti

13:08 II. Pieces in B-flat Major, Sylvius Leopold Weiss [1686-1750]
Prelude/Plainte/Saltarella

23:13 III. Violin Sonata in B-flat Major RV 759, Antonio Vivaldi [1678-1741]
Preludio-Largo/ Allemanda/ Sarabanda/ Correnta-Allegro
Rodolfo Richter- Violin
William Carter- Lute

38:00 IV. Sonata in C Major for two Violins Op.3 No.3, Jean-Marie Leclair [1697-1764]
Adagio-Vivace/ Adagio/ Allegro
Rodolfo Richter- Violin
Pierre Joubert- Violin

52:03 V. Adagio [Z.807] and Sonata [Z.809] in G Minor, Henry Purcell [1659-1695]
Tutti

Tonight’s programme includes some of our favourite music written during the life of Antonio Vivaldi.
As in our previous programme here [‘Bach and friends’] the idea of friendship is perhaps stretching it a little. Weiss and Vivaldi may well have known each other. Weiss spent eight years in Italy as a young man and they were moving in the same musical and aristocratic circles. There’s also the fascinating possibility that they performed in a concert in the final year of Vivaldi’s life. The Royal Prince of Poland [who was Weiss’s employer in Dresden] visited Venice and Vivaldi wrote music for the occasion. One piece on the programme was a concerto for the unusual combination of Lute and Viola d’amore. If Weiss was travelling with the Prince [which he often did] then what would be more natural for him to be given a star turn with Vivaldi and the other Venetian musicians? But, sadly we don’t have the records of who played what on this occasion.
The work we begin with, the trio sonata in B-flat has all of the tuneful brio we associate with Vivaldi. He must have liked it because most of the music survives in another version as a concerto- also in B-flat. We follow this with a solo sonata, one of a set of 12, never published in Vivaldi’s lifetime and completely unknown until they were discovered in the 1970’s in the Manchester Public Library! They were part of a collection of music which had been acquired by Charles Jennens, an 18th century man of letters best known today as the librettist of Handel’s Messiah and eventually wound up in Manchester where they sat on the shelves, gathering dust until 1973. Who knows what other Vivaldi works await discovery? According to him he wrote 100 operas but less than half that number survive today.
The music of Weiss which follows is still in the Italian style, most of Weiss’s musical education happened in Rome and it left an indelible mark on him, much as it did with Handel who had similar experiences in Italy.
The Weiss is followed by a carefully wrought duet for two violins by Leclair. While they are models of French refinement they also betray Italian influence, which is not surprising when we learn that he worked [as a dancer as well as a violinist] at the Court of Turin in his youth. He travelled widely through Europe before retiring to Paris where he was tragically murdered at the age of 67. Rumour has implicated his ex wife- an embittered Ballerina and also a nephew who had been demanding preferment, but the case remained unsolved at the time and it seems all but certain that we’ll never know for sure.
We close with our one work in a minor key, Purcell’s epic exploration of a repeated ground bass. This was a common framework for variations [in the upper parts] in the baroque period but Purcell seems to have made a specialty of it [‘a very easy thing to do’ he calls it in Playfords ’School of Music']. Most music in the baroque period [and after] falls into four and eight bar units which can become tedious in a repeated ground bass and Purcell avoids any possible monotony by making his ground bass five bars long. He also has the violins playing extraordinarily rich harmonies, sometimes to ear flaying effect, in a way that almost transcends the limits of baroque music. It’s a wonderful piece and we hope you will enjoy listening to it as much as we will enjoy playing it!
Pierre Joubert

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