This morning the Sunday Mornings at Ten series of YouTube concerts presented by Voices of Music (VoM) served up both sacred and secular programs. The former was a performance of the Venetian Christmas Vespers, composed by Alessandro Grandi and running about 75 minutes in length. However, for those that do not celebrate Christmas, VoM also released a Happy Holidays playlist, a program consisting of three concertos and excerpts from Terpsichore, a collection of courtly dances compiled by Michael Praetorius.
Screen shot of Augusta McKay Lodge playing the cadenza in the first movement of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Grosso mogul” concerto
The concerto composers were, in order of appearance, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (a C major concerto for trumpet and strings), Giuseppe Torelli (a D major concerto for trumpet and strings), and Antonio Vivaldi (his RV208, a finger-busting concerto for violin in D major given the title “Grosso mogul”). Each of these concertos was a major undertaking, but the Vivaldi selection presented the most demanding cadenzas by a long shot. Augusta McKay Lodge threw the full force of her technical skills into performing those cadenzas making for the most jaw-dropping events in the entire program.
Beyond being impressed by virtuosity unto an extreme, I have to confess to a soft spot for the Terpsichore collection. Like many of my generation, I first came to know this music not from “early music” performances but from Ottorino Respighi’s three Ancient Airs and Dances suites. However, once I had come to know all the themes from those suites, I was well prepared to listen to them as one might have heard them performed during the Renaissance.
Similarly, I relished the opportunity to listen to two different masters of the baroque trumpet. The soloist for the Biber concerto was John Thiessen, and Dominic Favia performed the Torelli concerto. Over the course of my concert-listening experiences, I came to know Thiessen through a diversity of eyebrow-raising performances. My first contact with Favia, on the other hand, was in April of 2016, when he performed the Torelli concerto with American Bach Soloists; and the video was probably made when he played the concerto at the Voices of Music Holiday Concert in December of 2018.
Those that prefer to take a secular approach to celebrating the end of the year will probably enjoy the Happy Holidays perspective while looking forward to future VoM programs.
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