Belated “Sundays at Ten” Released Yesterday

Hanneke van Proosdij performing Handel’s HWV 375 flute sonata with William Skeen on baroque cello and David Tayler on baroque guitar

Those wondering what happened to this past Sunday’s Sundays at Ten video compiled by Voices of Music (VoM) will be happy to learn that Episode 10 of Season 6, given the title Sperantes is now “in the system.” To appropriate an old Sesame Street idiom, the entire program was “sponsored” by the key of E minor. It was framed by two violin concertos composed by Antonio Vivaldi. The opening video of Augusta McKay Lodge playing the violin solo for the RV 278 violin concerto in E minor is the most recent video to be released by VoM. Chloe Kim was soloist for the concluding concerto, RV 277, given the title “Il Favorito.” (For those that prefer opus numbers, this is the second of the six concertos in Vivaldi’s Opus 11.) The concertos framed a recorder performance by Hanneke van Proosdij. Her selection was the “Minuetto” movement from movement from George Frideric Handel’s HWV 375 in E minor, the second of his three “Halle” flute sonatas.

The electronic mail announcing this release concluded with a quote by Johann Mattheson, who was a close friend of Handel. Mattheson is best known as a music theorist. This particular quote is taken from his 1713 treatise Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre as follows:

E minor is pensive, distressed, and sad; yet in such a way that one still finds some consolation in it; this key has something hopeful about it, whatever one may do with it, for otherwise it cannot tolerate any joy.

Bearing in mind that all twelve of Vivaldi’s Opus 11 concertos have fast-slow-fast structure, one can assume that Mattheson was referring to the slow movements! (To the best of my knowledge, “neu-eröffnete” translates into English as “reopened.” Perhaps Mattheson was writing about an ensemble that had disbanded and was subsequently revived.)

Would it be fair to say that, for the three selections on this program, Lodge, Proosdij, and Kim each had her own way of expressing those characteristics that Mattheson cited? Having revisited portions of this video, I would go at least as far as a decisive “maybe!” On the other hand, I am not sure that music theorists listen to performances the same ways that the rest of us do. (Full disclosure: I took several music theory courses in my student days.)

More importantly, the entire listening experience took only about half an hour; and, as far as I am concerned, that time could not have been better spent!