Concerto No.9 in D Major  from "L'estro Armonico," op.3
performed Oct 20, 2002

Long famous throughout Europe as a composer and violinist, Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) lost his public during the last decade of his life. He spent his final days in penury and, like Mozart after him, was buried in a pauper's grave, his scores seemingly doomed to obscurity. In fact, more than 200 years passed before musicians made the first sustained attempt at reviving the composer's works, in the late 1940s, and even at that time, musicologists would have scoffed at the suggestion that Vivaldi could ever again attain best-seller status. Yet, in the mid-1960s, Vivaldi's music had, with storybook rapidity, regained the kind of widespread admiration and adoration it had last known in the 1720s.

The vast size of Vivaldi's concerto output, (some 500 surviving works), was a consequence of the composer's 35 years of employment at Venice's Pio Ospedale della Pietà, where new music was constantly needed for the weekly Sunday public concerts presented by the students. The Pietà originated as a shelter and school for female orphans, but soon proved of such educational excellence (particularly in music) that the wealthy citizens began sending their daughters there. Clearly, the Pietà girls were superlatively trained musicians, or so Vivaldi's concertos indicate.

Vivaldi apparently considered such student works of less importance to his career than his operas, forty-six of which survive though there may have been many more. He repeatedly took leaves of absence from the Pietà to supervise productions of his stage works in various Italian cities.

As for his violin playing, Vivaldi's imaginativeness and his dexterity may be inferred from the concertos contained in L'estro Armonico, op. 3, published in 1711. Here, Vivaldi's work was a definable advance beyond the limits of early 18^th century standard practice, and was studied closely by, among others, Johann Sebastian Bach, who was greatly influenced by it. (Bach transcribed six of the concerti keyboard or other combinations of instruments.)