Vivaldi's composition of cello concertos was initially stimulated by his role as director of instrumental music at the Ospedale della Pietà, a famous Venetian home for abandoned children.
Compositional Technique
Vivaldi's later cello concertos show a tendency for the lyrical dimension to expand at the expense of passagework, which itself became more diverse and inventive.
Interpretation
For two of the concertos on this recording, RV415 and RV418, a five-string 'piccolo' cello is used instead of a normal cello to facilitate playing ultra-high notes and broken-chord passages.
Compositional Technique
Vivaldi's early cello concertos, like RV416 and RV420, often have more sections that are shorter in length, and a rhythmic character that tends to be uniform within each movement.
Composer Biography
Vivaldi wrote more solo cello concertos than anyone else in history, with recent calculations putting the number at twenty-eight, despite not being known as a cellist himself.
Composition History
The earliest concertos written exclusively for cello, without other soloists, were by Vivaldi, dating from the first decade of the eighteenth century.
Historical Context
The Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi worked, was a highly successful musical academy whose choir and orchestra became renowned throughout Europe.
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