Simone Pirri is an emerging Italian violinist and international prizewinner with an engaging and enthusiastic personality. Strongly driven by a profound passion for the music of the baroque and classical periods, Simone specialises in period performance and its historical practices
Following their hugely popular recital of baroque sonatas last April, Simone returns with a Baroque period chamber orchestra celebrating the works of Antonio Vivaldi and his contemporaries and featuring Vivaldi's deservedly popular sequence of violin concertos – The Four Seasons.
And, as a ‘thank you’ to you, our audience, for your continued support of Wye Valley Music through our fifty-seven years’ worth of Seasons, we would like to take this opportunity to invite all ticket holders to a drinks and canapés reception prior to the performance.
Antonio Vivaldi – Allegro from Sinfonia in B minor, RV 168
Antonio Vivaldi – Largo from Violin Concerto in B minor RV 387
Arcangelo Corelli – Fuga a quattro voci
Francesco Maria Veracini – Violin Sonata in A major, Op.1 No.7
Giuseppe Tartini – Violin Sonata "Didone Abbandonata" in G minor, Op.1 No.10
Francesco Antonio Bonporti – Concerto a quattro in B flat major, Op.11 No.2
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
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We’re delighted that early keyboard specialist David Wright has agreed to join Simone Pirri and Esplumoir for this concert. David is one of the country’s most in-demand harpsichordists, as a soloist, chamber musician and continuo player in orchestras and opera companies, including the Academy of Ancient Music, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the English Concert.
He was nicknamed il Prete Rosso (the Red Priest), the first on account of his hair colour, the second, of the profession he trained for…
The life story of Antonio Vivaldi seems made for the movies. Childhood ill-health coupled with a prodigious early talent… Dedicated to the priesthood yet romantically linked to several of his female music students… Much lauded, then ignored as the wheels of popular taste spun ever-faster, leaving him behind… The devoted son of Venice who died in poverty in Vienna, chasing one last break… The script almost writes itself.
But, musicologically speaking, it’s his passage from neglected figure to recognised Baroque genius that contains the real excitement. For, unlike the many other artists discarded by fashion and then embraced by posterity, Vivaldi’s about-turn in reputation was uncommonly reliant on whimsy and detective work.
It was the Austrian violinist and composer Fritz Kreisler who seems to have started the Vivaldi-revival and he did so with a musical hoax: for eight years, he told the world that his much praised 1927 Violin Concerto in C major was, in fact, a Vivaldi original from c.1700, found in a stash of overlooked manuscripts in a French monastery.
Inspired by this, scholar and Baroque fan Marc Pincherle took up the cause: he’d written his doctoral thesis on Vivaldi and now saw a chance to present the work to a larger audience in the form of a comprehensive first biography of the composer (finally published in 1948).
And keen-nosed researchers completed this haphazard rehabilitation process, becoming raiders of the lost archives…for, as luck would have it, there were any number of real Vivaldi scores forgotten in the depths of Europe’s monasteries, just waiting to be sniffed out.
Regular new discoveries and a growing interest in historically informed performances played on period instruments have helped seal the deal and today there’s no question that Vivaldi belongs among the greats.
So, join us on Sunday 16th June as Simone Pirri and Esplumoir come together to celebrate the works of Antonio Vivaldi and his contemporaries.
