Vivaldi specifically trained on the arm-held violin, which due to its sweet tone and associations with the night, came to be called the viola d’amore, a 12-string affair with six principal and six sympathetic strings. Vivaldi began his set of eight concertos around 1720, and he completed his last, RV 540 in D Minor, in 1740, one year before his death. The viola d’amore indeed possesses a distinct timbre – alternately thin and wiry, or eerily lush, especially in its double-stops. At times, the instrument can raise up guitar effects, as in the final Allegro of RV 394 in D Minor, after a charming siciliano. Many of the concertos’ outer movements suggest folk dances; and for the student of music to see a rustic connection to the symphonic worlds of Haydn and even Grieg is not too much of a stretch. The hurdy-gurdy effect in the slow movement of the RV 396 in A Major (c. 1733) proves quite elegant–with bowed staccato notes–the drone the very heart of pastoral music. The RV 395 in D Minor provides an exception, since its rhythms derive from courtly dances. Always, the dashing, driven energy of the Lombardic rhythm in Vivaldi assaults and captivates our ears.
Each of Vivaldi’s works merits discourse, but we limit the highlights to a select few: the RV 392 in D Major, whose general merriment finds a foil in the exquisitely anguished B Minor Largo–shades of Gesualdo–a movement with two fugatos in the orchestra, the solo accompanied by violins alone. Both the finale to RV 392 and the whole of the “spiky” motif RV 393 in D Minor are furious, bravura concertos, precursors to the Viotti virtuoso style, often juxtaposing duple and triple meters. We hear adumbrations of Viotti’s style again in the finale to the A Minor Concerto, RV 397, where amidst the frenzied ritornelli of the orchestra, the viola d’amore delivers a cantabile of arresting power. The earliest of the set, RV 97 in F Major, dates from Mantua and ceremonially ushers in hunting heraldry: Vivaldi in the form of Handel by way of Gabrieli! The swagger of the piece, with its perky oboes and horns, remains a unique, experimental sound from this disc. The last work on the album, the RV 540 Concerto for Viola d’amore and Lute (played by Giangiacomo Pinardi) in D Minor, was composed for a 21 March 1740 concert at the Pieta in Venice in honor of Frederick August II, King of Poland. Something valedictory permeates the writing–with muted orchestra–suggestive of Vivaldi’s intimations of mortality. Restrained nostalgia rules here, the two soli nodding agreement rather than dueling their way to virtuoso status.
— Gary Lemco
