Antonio Vivaldi: Pellegrina's Delight
Sonatas & Chamber Music for Oboe

Gail Hennessey and Nicholas Parle
Oboe and Organ & Harpsichord

with

Rodolfo Richter - Violin
Sally Holman - Bassoon
Katherine Sharman - 'cello
Pater McCarthy - Violine

Programme

The oboe was the dominant woodwind instrument of the early eighteenth century. Its role ranged from providing reinforcement for the violins in orchestral music to elaborate solo display. Vivaldi treated it especially generously in his music, writing at least 16 concertos for solo oboe. However, the oboe featured almost as prominently in his chamber music for one to five instruments with continuo. This recording offers an overview of Vivaldi’s use of the solo oboe in his chamber music. Because the chronological span of the seven works is fairly wide, the recording serves in addition to illustrate his stylistic development between c.1705 and c.1720.

The sonata for oboe and continuo in C minor, identified as RV 53 in the catalogue of Vivaldi’s works by Peter Ryom, is the only work from the composer’s pen to have been composed indisputably for this instrumental combination. A showpiece for the instrument, it requires great virtuosity, especially in the performance of chromatic notes, which were more difficult on the baroque oboe than on a modern instrument. One suspects that the sonata was tailored to a particular, expert player known to Vivaldi. Since RV 53 is preserved only in the Saxon State Library in Dresden, successor to the former royal library, to which the repertory of the court orchestra and of some of its most prominent musicians passed in the eighteenth century, one may infer that it was among the compositions collected in Venice by the court musicians who accompanied the electoral prince Frederick Augustus (later Augustus III of Saxony-Poland) on an extended visit in 1716-17.

These musicians were headed by the violinist Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755), the future leader of the court orchestra and a friend and pupil of Vivaldi. However, they included in addition a noted oboist, Johann Christian Richter (1689-1744), and it was perhaps for him that Vivaldi composed RV 53 during the period of the prince’s sojourn in Venice. This dating is supported by the fact that the material of the finale is used (in slower tempo) also for the central movement of the sinfonia to Vivaldi’s opera L’incoronazione di Dario, which opened in Venice during carnival time in 1717.

Vivaldi tends to be conventional in the movement plans of his sonatas. The classic, Corellian scheme of four movements in the sequence Slow-Fast-Slow-Fast predominates, although a three-movement (Fast-Slow-Fast) plan, identical with that used for most concertos, becomes increasingly common in his later sonatas. RV 53 follows the four-movement plan. A stately Adagio, which has an independent introduction by the continuo in the manner of a cantata aria, is followed by a sprightly Allegro, a melodious Andante (in which the continuo engages in non-stop imitation with the oboe) and a whirlwind of an Allegro. Noteworthy is the fact that all four movements are cast in the home key of C minor. Such ‘homotonality’ (a term invented by the late Hans Keller) is exceptionally common in Vivaldi, who can be said to have pioneered its use in compositions of this type. A price is paid with regard to variety, but there is ample compensation in the intensity with which the mood represented by a key (here, a melancholy passion) can be sustained.

The quartet sonata RV 779 steps back into the first decade of Vivaldi’s activity as a composer, when he was serving as a violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà, Venice’s famous home for foundlings. Selected girls were admitted after an audition to the coro (musical establishment) of the Pietà, from which a choir and, even more remarkably, a large orchestra containing instruments both usual and unusual were recruited. After services in the Pietà’s chapel it was normal for concerts of instrumental music to take place, and this is the likely setting for the first performance of RV 779.

An autograph score of this extraordinary work survives in the Saxon State Library. It was recognised as a composition of Vivaldi only in the 1970s, the composer’s name appearing on the manuscript only in the abbreviated form ‘D.A.V.’. The music is laid out on four staves. The upper two are for violin and oboe, the lower two for obligato organ. Optionally, a tenor chalumeau (the ‘elder cousin’ of the clarinet, replaced on this recording by the bassoon) may reinforce the organ bass, although no separate part for it is provided.

Vivaldi made a note on the manuscript of the names of the four female musicians who were chosen to perform the sonata. They are Pellegrina (oboe), Prudenza (violin), Lucietta (organ) and Candida (chalumeau). Pellegrina (1678-1754) and Candida (c.1674-1757) were undoubtedly pupils of Ludwig Erdmann (1683-1759) a Prussian wind player who, like Vivaldi, was employed as a salaried teacher at the Pietà. Lucietta (c.1676-1757) was presumably taught by Francesco Gasparini, the choirmaster, while Prudenza (b. 1681) was one of the many violinists under Vivaldi’s tutelage. Since Prudenza left the Pietà in December 1709 to marry one of the institution’s governors, the sonata must have been composed earlier.

What is most remarkable about RV 779 is its concerto-like character, despite the retention of a slow opening movement. The oboe, the violin and the organist’s right hand act like the three soloists in a triple concerto, freely weaving in and out of one another’s lines. The two short cadenzas for organ in the opening two movements, wholly foreign to the sonata tradition, reinforce this impression. Another noteworthy feature is the accompanimental figuration for organ that runs through the third movement (Largo e cantabile). This requires the player’s right and left hands to co-operate closely in a manner not seen elsewhere in Vivaldi, whose keyboard parts tend to keep the two hands widely separated.

The solo sonatas in G minor (RV 28) and B flat (RV 34) are ordinarily considered violin sonatas. Copied out by, respectively, the flautist Johann Joachim Quantz and his mentor Pisendel, they survive only in Dresden. However, violin is not specified explicitly as the upper instrument, and the German scholar Manfred Fechner has argued very convincingly that since both are eminently playable on the oboe, not requiring double stopping or any notes lying outside the wind instrument’s compass, this may well be the intended instrument. Less flamboyant than RV 53, the two sonatas are nevertheless quite testing for the solo instrument. RV 28 places its slow third movement in E flat major, not the more conventional B flat major. In Vivaldi’s music the keys of G minor and E flat major enjoy a ‘privileged’ relationship, being juxtaposed to one another in countless works and movements, regardless of which key acts as the tonic.

Vivaldi’s first publication was a set of twelve trio sonatas originally published in Venice in 1705. They show clearly his dependence on the model provided by Corelli in his two famous collections of chamber sonatas based largely on dance movements (Op. 2 and 4) but already give hints of the individual voice that would emerge with full force in the concertos of Op. 3 (1711). These sonatas are scored for two violins and bass but also work excellently if one violin is replaced, as here, by an oboe, even if a few notes have to be transposed by an octave. Such a substitution is far from ‘inauthentic’, since it is encountered on countless occasions in contemporary sources: a pragmatic approach to instrumentation is in fact a quintessentially ‘authentic’ attribute of the music of the period. The second sonata of the set, RV 67, has an ‘abstract’ opening movement (Grave), which is followed by three dance-movements in Allegro tempo: a Corrente with ‘jagged’ rhythms, a flowing Giga, and a short and sweet Gavotta.

RV 106 is not a sonata but a three-movement concerto for flute, violin and bassoon (alternatively, two violins and cello); the present performance substitutes oboe as the first treble instrument. It probably dates from c.1720. Its form follows the concerto model very closely: in ‘tutti’ sections the oboe, violin and bassoon join forces to become a miniature orchestra, while in ‘solo’ sections the oboe detaches itself to become a soloist, relegating its partners to an accompanimental role. Chamber concertos of this kind appear to have been an invention of Vivaldi; they ‘domesticate’ the genre in a manner similar to that practised by Bach and Telemann in their concertos for solo harpsichord.

RV 801, only recently recognised as an authentic work of Vivaldi, is a kind of missing link between the sonata a quattro (as represented by RV 779) and the fully fledged chamber concerto. From the former it takes its four-movement plan and the principle of equal treatment for the melody instruments (oboe, violin, bassoon); from the latter, its extended passages of solo display. In fact, RV 801 appears to foreshadow the genre known as the quadro that flourished briefly around the middle of the eighteenth century in France and Germany. It survives only as a set of parts in the Fürstenberg collection at Schloss Herdringen, Westphalia, and can probably be assigned to the period 1715-1720.

Michael Talbot, 2003