Sunday, June 12, 2011

8 Vivaldi Concerti

Getting ready to record eight Vivaldi Concerti in August.  I have received the facsimiles from the National Library of Turin and now have my own very plain edition for the recordings.

As always with our recording projects, rehearsal time is short, so there are decisions to make about tailoring the parts for quick understanding --- do cues make it easier by showing the confusing bits, or do they just get in the way since excellent players catch on very quickly?  These are just some of the housekeeping details that I ponder in the course of preparations.

I love Vivaldi's music because of it's extreme vitality and humanity... there is so much room for imagination and he must have been exasperatingly insightful about instruments other than his own in order have written these pieces for bassoon.

I have chosen 8 concerti to record and categorize them roughly as "happy" and "sad", with further characterizations that can be loosely described as the Hoedown Concerti and the Faintly Sinister Masked Ball Concerti (there are easily two in each of these categories) or the Pirate Concerti (also identified as the Jack Sparrow meets Midsummer's Night Dream Concerti) and the Turkish Caravan Concerto.  I have many other adjectival responses to the concerti yet I have probably already said too much...

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