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VIVALDI MANDOLIN CONCERTO For many, the appeal of Vivaldi’s music lies in its tunefulness, clarity and optimism—its aura of coming from a less complicated era when music was meant simply to be beautiful. Yet, as scholar H. C. Robbins Landon has pointed out, there is another quality in Vivaldi’s music that links him to our own time. Robbins Landon calls attention to his “wiry, nervous sound” and the extreme concentration and vivacity of his rhythm. Vivaldi’s music may be beautiful but it is never boring, and it has a rhythmic propulsion and energy to which our driven era can easily relate. Known as the “Red Priest” for his fiery hair, Vivaldi took holy orders as a youth but pursued the career of violin virtuoso and composer for his entire life. Most of his years were devoted to directing the music programs at Venice’s Pio Ospedale della Pietà, a foundling institution for orphaned girls. So superb was his training that concerts by L’Ospedale’s all-girl orchestras and choirs ranked among the musical wonders of 18 th -century Venice. To showcase the girls’ and his own instrumental virtuosity, Vivaldi wrote hundreds of concertos for various solo instruments and combinations. In the process, he established the Baroque three-movement concerto form of two fast movements surrounding a 14 OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org slow movement. The outer movements alternate an orchestral (tutti) ritornello or refrain with freer, modulating episodes in which the soloist shows off his or her abilities. The slow movement emphasizes the soloist, with a singing melody to subdued accompaniment. The Mandolin Concerto in C Major was written in 1725 about the same time as The Four Seasons. Throughout, Vivaldi was very careful never to let the orchestra swamp the mandolin’s soft but brilliant sound. In the vivacious opening Allegro, the intricate solo sections require both expressivity and virtuosity. In the Largo, the soloist plays delicately pinging dotted rhythms, reinforced by the orchestral pizzicatos. The final Allegro is playful and emphasizes rapid sixteenth notes for the soloist. As his fame spread throughout Europe (J. S. Bach was a great fan and imitator), Vivaldi went on extensive tours around Italy and the German- speaking countries. It is believed that the Lute Concerto in D Major was written about 1730 in Prague for a Bohemian nobleman. Transcribed here for the mandolin, it ranks among Vivaldi’s most popular concertos, with one of the loveliest of his slow movements: a moving meditation for the soloist over muted strings. Its fast movements have superb, almost percussive energy suitable to lute or mandolin, with the finale an ebullient dance in bouncing 12/8 meter. Instrumentation: String orchestra. SYMPHONY IN C MAJOR Georges Bizet Born in Paris, France, October 25, 1838; died in Bougival, France, June 3, 1875 Georges Bizet belonged to that ill-fated group of composers—including Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn—who blazed up rapidly and then were extinguished well before they reached their 40 th year. Bizet was particularly unfortunate in that he died at age 36, exactly three months after the disastrous premiere of his great opera Carmen. If he had lived only one more year, he could have rejoiced in the international celebrity that had eluded him up to then despite his extraordinary talent. However, life was full of promise when Bizet wrote his remarkable Symphony in C in the fall of 1855 just after celebrating his 17th birthday. His precocity was astounding. He had been allowed to enter the Paris Conservatoire just before his tenth birthday, even though he was below the required age. After six months of study, he won the Conservatoire’s first prize for solfège or sight-singing. And in all his other courses —piano, organ, fugue —he proved an equally quick study. At age 18, he concluded his ascent by capturing the biggest prize of all: the Prix de Rome for composition, which underwrote five years of study in Rome, Germany and Paris. At the Conservatoire, the noted composer Charles Gounod became very impressed with the teenager. Gounod had long been laboring over his Symphony in D Major, and Bizet assisted him by preparing a piano arrangement. Building on what he’d learned, Bizet then promptly wrote his own Symphony in C Major, which—though it borrowed some ideas and techniques from the Gounod work—turned out to be a vastly superior piece in every way. But Bizet apparently thought little of it and squirreled it away among his manuscripts. It then languished in the Conserva- toire’s library until the 1930s, when it was