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The Croatian Baroque Ensemble is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and Laura Vadjon, the ensemble's first violinist since its founding and today its director, will perform at the 76th Festival. They will be joined in a rich and diverse program by world legend of the baroque violin, Fabio Biondi.
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PROGRAMME:
Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 violins in A minor, RV 522,
from the collection „L'Estro Armonico”
Allegro – Larghetto e spiritoso – Allegro
Giovanni Battista Sammartini: Sinfonia in G major, J-C 39
Allegro ma non tanto – Grave – Allegro assai – Minuetto
Francesco Geminiani: Concerto grosso no. 12, in D minor, H. 143, „La Follia”
Pietro Nardini: Violin concerto in A major, op. 1 br.1
Allegro – Adagio – Allegro assai
Gaetano Pugnani: Sinfonia in B flat major
Adagio – Allegro assai – Andante – Menuet con Trio
Johann Sebastian Bach: Concerto for 2 violins in D minor,, BWV 1043
Vivace – Largo ma non tanto – Allegro
Croatian Baroque Ensemble
Violins: Laura Vadjon, concertmaster
Tanja Tortić, Helga Korbar, Saša Reba, Ivana Žvan,
Katarina Kutnar, Ana Labazan Brajša
Violas: Asja Frank, Tonka Philips
Cello: Dora Kuzmin Maković
Double bass: Pavle Kladarin
Theorbo: Jan Čižmar
Harpsichord: Pavao Mašić
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This evening’s programme begins and ends with works of the masters of Baroque music – Vivaldi and Bach. Bach studied and transcribed Vivaldi’s works and reportedly said that Vivaldi ‘taught him to think musically’. The programme also includes works by four Italian composers who were also influenced by Vivaldi, such as Sammartini, one of the ‘fathers of the symphony’. All of these Italian composers were also influenced by another composer – Arcangelo Corelli. The master of the concerto grosso and the founder of the Italian instrumental tradition, Corelli is also the composer who made the La follia theme famous. While Vivaldi was one of the composers who used this theme, tonight we will hear Geminiani’s version of La Follia. Corelli was Geminiani’s teacher, Geminiani Nardini’s, while Pugnani – who may have known Nardini – was a student of Corelli’s student, Somis.
‘The Red Priest’ – the red-haired composer and priest Antonio Vivaldi (Venice, 1678 – Vienna, 1741) learned to play the violin from his father as a child. Later, he taught violin, conducting and composition, mainly to girls in Venetian orphanages, for whom he wrote many works. Shortly after he was ordained, he ceased celebrating Mass, claiming that this was due to illness. He became famous with his early trio sonatas and the set of concertos from this evening’s programme, L’estro armonico; Johann Sebastian Bach transcribed at least nine of his concertos for keyboard instruments. Vivaldi held a number of musical positions in churches in Venice, he was maestro di cappella da camera at the court of Prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, and spent three carnival seasons in Rome, where he composed operas. The concertos from Op. 8 strengthened his reputation as a composer, and towards the end of his life he went to seek his fortune as a composer in Vienna.
Vivaldi exerted greatest influence in the field of instrumental music, especially concertos, in which he used a ritornello structure in fast movements and a three-movement composition pattern. A skilled orchestrator, he used some quite new effects such as damping and pizzicato and expanded playing techniques. Vivaldi wrote about five hundred concertos and probably (judging by his notes) about a hundred operas, of which twenty have survived.
L’estro armonico – The Harmonic Inspiration – is Vivaldi’s Opus 3. It was published by the Dutch publisher Estienne Roger in 1711, with Vivaldi’s dedication to Ferdinando de’Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, and turned out to be one of the most influential editions of the first half of the 18th century. The collection contains twelve concertos (for one, two, three, or four violins). In the concerto from tonight’s program, Op. 3, No. 8, the outer movements are more energetic and spirited, requiring virtuosity, while the Larghetto is melodious and lyrical.
Giovanni Battista Sammartini (S. Martino, Martini, St. Martino; Milan ~1700–1775) was a composer from the period of transition from the Baroque to the early Classical era. He was a son of the French oboist Alexis Saint-Martin, and a brother of Giuseppe, also a respected oboist and later a composer in England. Sammartini spent most of his life in Milan, where he was an organist in several churches and a respected educator, for whom many came to Milan: Gluck was probably one of his students.
Sammartini was among the first composers to write sinfonie and symphonies specifically for concert performance. His symphonies are some of the earliest in general, and he also wrote some of the earliest string quartets and quintets (with three violins, viola and double bass). His music was known far and wide, and his works were published in Paris and London. He is thought to have written about 2,000 works, but many are lost. Sixty-eight symphonies, six violin concertos, one for two violins, two for flute, concerti grossi, overtures, and four operas have survived. His orchestral works may have influenced Johann Christian Bach, Boccherini, and Haydn, although Haydn denied Sammartini’s influence.
The symphony from this evening’s programme, J-C39, is undated, and it is his only four-movement symphony to survive. Sammartini took the minuet from his trio sonata. In the Grove Encyclopaedia, musicologist Bathia Churgin writes: ‘Sammartini’s music played a fundamental role in the formation of the Classical style. He was one of the most advanced and experimental composers of the early Classical period, and the first great master of the symphony, preserving his individuality despite the rise of the Viennese and Mannheim schools. Though the extent of Sammartini’s influence is still not fully measured, the high quality of his music places him among the leading creative spirits of the 18th century.’
Francesco Saverio Geminiani (Lucca, 1687 – Dublin, 1762) was an Italian composer, educator and music theorist, one of the greatest violinists of his time. A student of Arcangelo Corelli, he built his career as a violinist in England, where he published his first, technically very demanding sonatas. His concerti grossi were also very popular, as was his influential theoretical work The Art of Playing on the Violin. Geminiani wrote 47 concertos, but 23 were arrangements of Corelli’s. In his approach to Corelli’s music, we can maybe find a parallel for Bach’s transcriptions of Vivaldi’s works.
In the Concerto La Folia, he took a theme/harmonic progression that was first recorded in Portugal in the 15th century and later used by many composers. A few days ago, Rachmaninoff’s version was performed here at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. Corelli made the theme famous with his Sonata, Op. 5, No. 12. Geminiani adapted the structure of the Sonata, which was written for violin and basso continuo, for a concerto grosso – dividing the performers into a smaller group (concertino) and a larger one (ripieno), leaving the variations, but with more interplay between the smaller and the larger group. He also enriched the texture, supplemented the harmonies and counterpoint, and adopted some of Corelli’s ornaments.
Pietro Nardini (Livorno, 1722 – Florence, 1793) was also a violinist and composer. He began his musical career in his hometown, and then went to Padua, where he was a prized student of Giuseppe Tartini. He gave concert tours around Europe, and played under Jommelli at the court in Stuttgart. He was a violinist and then music director of the esteemed chapel at the court of Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He performed until his seventies, at the courts of Naples, Rome and Pisa.
Nardini wrote 25 sonatas and a dozen violin concertos, as well as overtures. He began writing concertos under the influence of Tartini, and the Concerto, Op. 1, No. 1, is clearly his early work. The outer fast movements of Nardini’s concertos are very fluid, while the slow ones feature a cantabile. He was not inclined to ‘bombastic’ music and acrobatics. Leopold Mozart heard him in 1763 and said that ‘the beauty, purity and evenness of his tone and his cantabile cannot be surpassed’, but he also added that Nardini does not execute great difficulties and concluded that ‘his compositions are marked by vivacity, grace, and sweet sentimentality.’
Another violinist and composer, Gaetano Pugnani (Turin, 1731–1798) studied music with Giovanni Battista Somis, who was a student of Corelli. He began playing at the Teatro Regio in Turin, and studied composition with Francesco Ciampi in Rome. Pugnani gained an international reputation as a great virtuoso: an article in the Parisian Mercure de France stated that ‘connoisseurs insist that they have never heard a better violinist than this virtuoso.’ He was among the first in Italy to use a straighter and longer bow, probably under the influence of the father and son Tourte, Parisian bowmakers. He staged some of his operas in London – at first his opere buffe, then opere serie. In Vienna he conducted a performance of his suite based on Goethe’s Werther, he toured with his student Viotti, and returned to play in Turin, whose music scene was beginning to collapse due to the war with France.
In addition to operas, he was a prolific composer of chamber music, while only one of his violin concertos survives. Musicologist Boris Schwarz wrote: ‘As a composer Pugnani reached far beyond the violin into the field of opera, symphony and chamber music, and must be considered an important representative of mid-century Italian Classicism. His symphonies exemplify the Italian theatrical style best known through its Mannheimer and Viennese proponents. He preferred a four-movement sequence with a minuet in third place.'
Often described as ‘a musical genius’, Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, 1685 – Leipzig, 1750) seems to have considered his work a craft, which, of course, does not diminish its beauty. Many of his pieces, highly appreciated today, were actually created as exercises, teaching examples. In various musical forms, Bach combined contrapuntal traditions, chromatic harmony, Baroque affectation, and symbols with which he emphasized the religious content of some of his works.
He was organist in Arnstadt, court organist in Weimar, court Kapellmeister in Köthen, and in 1723 settled in Leipzig, where he became the cantor of St Thomas Church. While in Weimar, 1713–1714, Bach became familiar with Vivaldi’s works from the scores procured by Duke Johann Ernst. There is no evidence that Vivaldi knew Bach’s music.
Concerto for 2 Violins, Strings and Continuo in D minor, BWV 1043, is probably one of Bach's best-known works. He wrote it in Köthen, but it was probably based on an earlier trio sonata. The piece is characterised by a subtle interplay of the violins throughout the work, with rich imitation and counterpoint. It begins with a fugue whose main theme is introduced by the orchestra, while the soloists respond. The second movement is a dramatic siciliana, and in the third the violins move in a dramatic, strict canon. The work has entered popular culture as it has been used in many films and shows.
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