Vivaldi Virtuosi

Experience the virtuosic prowess of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble in a program of some of Antonio Vivaldi’s most evocative and dynamic concertos. 

Like water echoing through the canals of his home city of Venice, Vivaldi’s music shimmers and flows with rhythmic vitality and graceful melodies. In the concert’s opening piece, it carries the tempestuous energy of a storm. The Concerto for Flute, Oboe, Bassoon, and Strings, “La tempesta di mare,” paints a vivid picture of crashing waves and the fury of the sea, a storminess heard again with occasional moments of repose in the Violin Concerto in E Minor. 

In the composer’s Flute Concerto variant of “La tempesta di mare,” we see that Vivaldi was not only a master of expression, but an innovator of musical form, as he helped vastly expand the genre of the concerto. His distinctive movement structure of fast-slow-fast became a blueprint for future Baroque composers. And unlike earlier concertos, which typically consisted of alternating full and smaller ensemble sections, Vivaldi chose to spotlight single instruments instead, writing virtuosic music for a variety of instruments not previously heard soloistically. This particular flute concerto may even be the first ever written for the transverse flute (as opposed to the recorder). 

Beyond expressive solo lines, Vivaldi’s mastery of melding diverse musical voices can be heard in the sprightly Concerto for Oboe and Violin in B-flat Major, which features the two instruments in charming dialogue with each other. 

In a dazzling finale, OSL Ensemble member Krista Bennion Feeney takes center stage for the variations on “La folia,” where she skillfully navigates the intricate twists and turns of Vivaldi’s inventive transformations on the popular Renaissance melody.

Underwriting for the 2023-2024 Chamber Music Series comes from the Asbjorn Lunde Foundation.