Vivaldi's solo concertos clearly concentrate on one type of form, developing their individuality from the tension between typical form and extensive typical inflections on the one hand, and, on the other, the specific tone-colour of the solo instruments and instrumental combinations. Equally confusingly colourful and varied in form, inflections and instrumental combinations is the group of concerti for solo instruments with continuo, i. e. without orchestra, which occupy a historically original and aesthetically attractive halfway position between the chamber sonata and the solo concerto. Scarcely any composer in the first half of the 18th century used this type of “concerto without orchestra” as often and as imaginatively as did Vivaldi, and no other, with the exception of Telemann, had with such works a comparable success - quite apart from his personal sphere of influence - although these works remained unpublished during Vivaldi`s lifetime.
Not only in the solo setting of these pieces do they resemble chamber-music but, even more, in their inclination to differentiation of the movement structure, to ever new and surprising deviations from traditional formal schemes or to their imaginative new realisation; like chamber-music too, especially in slow movements, are the turns of phrase, which are far removed from the strong-gestured, fiery and extravert temperament of the quick concerto-movements as well as from the hardly less extravert pathos of many concerto slow movements. More typical of the concerto, on the other hand, and fully justifying the title of concerto for these works, are the pointed, energyladen unison themes of the quick movements, in which the solo ensemble imitates, as it were, the sound of the traditional string orchestra; typical of the concerto, above all, is the solo prominence of individual instruments above the ensemble of chamber-music voices, often with noticeably virtuoso demands on technique, such as would have been foreign to actual late-Baroque chamber-music; and finally, typical of the concerto is the manner in which the concerto-like contrasts of blocks of tutti and soli are broken up in the course of the movements - not by thematic writing and polyphonic combination of voices, as hefitted chamber-music (mostly in the realm of the triosonata), but by short solo flourishes, motifs and thematic fragments, which bring various instruments together either singly or in changing groupings, almost in dialogue, "conversational", and thereby anticipating the central idea of classical chamber-music in respect of the principle of concerto playing, even if as yet without the principle of thematic construction.
These concerti contributed to the dilution of movement construction in Baroque chamber-music. to its replacement by concerto-like elements, to the spread of the concertante dialogue-principle into the sphere of chamber-music, as did, a little later, the concertini of Sammartini and his circle, who prepared the way direct to the string quartet. But independently of their historical importance, Vivaldi's solo, chamber-music-like concerti belong - thanks purely to their intermediate position between the only recently established and the already changing forms of early 18th century Italian instrumental music - to the most attractive and original works of this by no means unoriginal composer.
It seldom happens that a recording of Baroque music gives us pleasure, although originally most of that music was intended to entertain the musicians as well as the audience. Being so far removed in time added to totally different playing circumstances - microphones were not used very much in the 17th and 18th centuries - we are then totally and seriously occupied in trying to the best of our abilities to produce a technically and spiritually perfect picture.
Recording, however, the present Concerti, I must admit that our attitude turned into a very gay, sometimes even boyish mood. The reason for this was, I suppose, that we realized that, although the music had been written around 1720, we were actually playing what sounded like neo-Baroque, as Strawinsky or Milhaud could have composed. Baroque music as an arrangement of Baroque music, This double mirror effect shodfted and enlighted us performers.
The expert might even call these Concerti bad compositions of an untalented beginner (but Vivaldi wrote a pile of masterworks in the same years and earlier), full of boring themes, consecutive octaves and fifths by the dozen, feeble harmonies and instrumental errors. How often during the recording we almost hysterically got caught in a giggle when the dawn of another endless sequence rose or an instrumental part proved to be either out of compass or unplayable other than with a technique of much later date.
At times Vivaldi was more an inventor than a composer; he then left the aestethic rules behind and played with derided new, unusual forms and instrumental combinations. It has been this avant-gardism also which probably inspired Bach, and, after all, still inspires musicians and listeners today.
Vivaldi’s inexhaustible richness of invention is already apparent in the first concerto on this disc, which in the outer movements is almost a violin concerto, in the middle movement almost a trio-sonata. The first movement begins with a ritornello theme whose simplicity and effectiveness, almost in the character of a popular song, is itself unusual for Vivaldi’s concerto movements. This is followed by broadly planned solos, which are interrupted by terse tuttis, and in which the virtuosity of the violin is increased from time to time. The other instruments put in a word with short solos, especially the flute, which in the first and second solo-complex is accompanied by bassoon and continuo, but in the third has an enchanting broad cantilena over violin arpeggios, while the bassoon, now also treated as a soloist, plays broken chords with the continuo. The slow movement entrusts to the flute a well-known favourite theme of Vivaldi’s of noble singing quality, and in a highly original way combines the violin (in arpeggios) and bassoon (without bass or harpsichord) into a quasi-continuo group. The finale begins - again unusually - with a violin solo, from which first an emphatic unison tutti slowly develops: this then again becomes a very virtuosic concerto movement for the violin before the final ritornello. - If our first concerto was a chamber-style violin concerto, the second work on this disc is a concerto-style chamber sonata for flute and violin with a bass which is handled half as a concertante, half as a continuo. The three-movement sequence of Vivaldi’s typical concerto and the form of the movements (a sequence of tuttis and solos in the quick movements, ternary song form or binary dance form in the slow ones) are compulsorily retained here, but are differentiated as chamber music, appropriately to the small, dynamically limited, instrumentation. - The G minor concerto acts as a heightened blend of the tendencies of the two previous works: the supremacy of one single instrument is broken, and the governing principle is of concertante playing shared between all the instruments, singly or in changing groups: only the three-movement concerto form and the vestiges of the block-like exchanges between tutti and solo still call to mind the genre whose name the work bears. - The C major concerto makes use of a layout for two woodwinds and two strings, while allowing the instruments to play not only among themselves but in groups, and thereby obtains colourful effects, especially in the trill passages of the first movement. This begins with an astonishing anticipation of Haydn’s slow introductions, in which the main theme of the Allegro is foreshadowed: for the rest, it is entirely attuned to Vivaldi’s C major style, with signal-like triad motives, virtuoso figurations and fixed tonal planes. The slow movement is a flute solo with continuo. The finale, in form a concerto movement like the first, is almost entirely built on its signal motive (so that a close relation between the outer movements in theme and cast is produced, unusual in Vivaldi): in its simplicity of gesture and the effectiveness of its key relationships, as for example in the turn to E minor of the third tutti of an exciting “final dance", it is the equal of the composer’s best solo concerros. - The A minor concerto clearly recalls the second concerto on our record - not only in its instrumentation and in the kindship of the latter’s first movement to its finale (with nearly identical principal subjects), but above all in the chamber-type differentiation of the movement with the aid of concertante techniques. Almost more strongly than in the previous case, here also traditional concerto-movement form - the standard concerto three-movement sequence - is undermined. On the other hand however the remains of the solo concerto are clearer - especially in that both violins here move together practically through-out, in lyrical parallel thirds or in broken chords, and so, as a kind of continuo layout, contrast with the flute (which is treated as a soloist).