Review of Academy of Ancient Music: The Art of the Italian Concerto
The last quarter of the C17th and the first half or so of the following one were years in which the Italian Concerto was evolving in the direction of the orchestral formats with which we are now more or less familiar.
The Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, distinguished violinist Bojan Čičić, had arranged for Wednesday evening’s programme at West Road an exploration of the directions taken by Baroque music during this largely experimental, and perhaps for many of us most under-studied of periods. Two Composers of great stature, Antonio Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli were prominent in developments.
These two composer-performers represented not only a geographical divide, Vivaldi in Venice and Corelli in Rome, but also a musical one, with Corelli bringing to perfection the so-called ‘Concerto Grosso’, a form in which the musical material is passed among a small group of soloists and full orchestra, and the concerto favoured by Vivaldi, essentially the full orchestra with a single soloist.
Italy was the seat of activities for another reason, too. The rise in importance of the violin there enabled extraordinary performances by composers who were able to display their virtuosity on the instrument.
One such figure was Pietro Locatelli who wrote a set of concertos, L’Arte del Violino, compositions of formidable difficulty and of the kind only professional musicians were able to attempt. As well as the Locatelli, we also heard works from comparable virtuosi such as Mossi and Valentini, both pupils of Corelli.
The Italian word ‘Concerto’ (or ‘concert’) of course implied musicians working together in harmony, and this element of exchange and dialogue, essentially dialogue among instruments of the same family (we heard compositions for two, even ‘four violins’) or between a player or players and individual sections of the orchestra, was central to the music of this era, brilliantly evoked by AAM in its selections from well-known and perhaps less-known figures of the time.
The programme began with Mossi, who, like Valentini, had played with his master Corelli at the premiere of one of Handel’s oratorios, La Ressurezione in 1708. Passages from the opening adagio and final allegro of Mossi’s Concerto in G minor Op 4 No.12 could easily be mistaken for those of Handel who himself had composed several works in the very popular Concerto Grosso form inspired and motivated by Corelli.
Equally, J.S. Bach had transcribed some of Vivaldi’s first published concertos (1711) for solo keyboard. Such communities of renown made this very much a golden age for music.
At the pre-concert talk ‘Times’ journalist Rebecca Franks invited some of the performers, Bojan himself, second violinist Julia Kuhn and harpsichordist Steven Devine to give their thoughts on the current status of historical period music.
Steven Devine, as a keyboardist, and Bojan Čičić believed that we too are living through a golden age. People are responding, for example, to the sound of long neglected earlier pianos, and it was interesting to learn something of the strings at work in the forthcoming evening’s programme.
Bojan remarked that although he played a Milanese violin of 1703, Italian violins at this time did not have the same reputational aura as currently they do. In fact German instruments, such as the violin of 1749 played by Julia Kuhn, were the ones much sought after.
The evening began with a still largely ‘unknown’ composer (Mossi), and in the ‘competition’ for dominance between Vivaldi and Corelli, it was Vivaldi who ultimately prevailed.
But Bojan had devised the concert to end with a six movement Concerto Grosso (in D major, Op.6 No. 4) by Corelli whom he clearly loves, and whose ‘clean crisp, harmonic writing’ (his words) remained influential and popular well into the C18th.
The Academy of Ancient Music, as expected, had proved once again in words and musical performance their capability to navigate both authoritatively and delightfully the most complex of territories, including among many such extensive terrains the multifarious arts of the Italian concerto.
JOHN GILROY
