Antonio Vivaldi “composed one concerto 500 times”, Igor Stravinsky once said disparagingly. Was the Venetian Baroque composer truly lacking in musical inventiveness? Not at all! That Vivaldi indeed wrote about 500 instrumental concertos is in itself already an astonishing achievement – especially if you consider that the composer of course also composed music for other instrumentation, including sonatas, sacred choral pieces and about 50 (!) operas. But Vivaldi’s compositional oeuvre should serve as a warning against making overhasty evaluations – and not only in terms of quantity. The fact that the composer lived in a time in which music was subject to manifold aesthetic and compositional changes also needs to be taken into consideration. Take, for instance, the genre of the solo concerto that he promoted so strongly: at the time it was still in its infancy.
Basically, it was Vivaldi who, together with other Italian composers of his generation, contributed to the “invention” as well as the first formal and technical consolidation of the solo concerto. Vivaldi’s contributions to this genre thus cannot look back on any tradition; without exception, they have experimental character. Besides performing works by contemporaries of Vivaldi, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, which in 2015 was awarded the “Echo Classic Prize” for their Vivaldi CD, is putting up for discussion four of his loveliest violin concerti, together with the charismatic violinist Giuliano Carmignola. Even Stravinsky ungrudgingly conceded that each of them is in its own way “perfect” ...
