The Great Genius of 18th Century Descriptive Music

It delights me to no end to be among those announcing the release of the second volume of Rampal's traversal of the Vivaldi flute concerti. As I noted when Volume I came out. I somehow have missed acquiring most of these pieces, and when MHS announces a Vol. I of a series I'd like to have. without hinting when (or if) Vol. II will be forthcoming. I get just a bit fidgety. To be sure, it's been but six months, in which a brief period only a minimum number of waiting subscribers can have been run down by firetrucks, deprived of their hearing, or transferred to Tristan da Cunha. But I've been waiting nigh-on eight years for Vol. II of Demus' Complete Piano Music of Brahms. I noted the other day that Janice Beck's anthology of American Organ Music in Five Volumes left off with Vol. II at about the same time. Half of the Complete Organ Sonatas of Joseph Rheinberger have huddled together on my basement shelves for two years anxiously awaiting their brethren. A blurb I ran across in a magazine last fall assured me that if I joined the Society I would soon be able to buy the final volume of the Couperin Harpsichord pieces; the money I've held clasped in my fist since then is getting sweaty and tattered.

So Vivaldi-lovers and flute-lovers and Rampal-fans. consider yourselves blest.

The Vivaldi Year--1978. his 300th birth­day--has come. Ay. Caesar. but not gone, because new recordings continue to pour from the stampers, some of them as ongoing projects that have no foreseeable end. This present set. however. is not part of Erato's mammoth scheme (now completed at the source) to record all of the concerti published in Vivaldi's lifetime. though I believe that Vol. I. the Op. 10 works. was included in it. But. as I noted last time. the Complete Flute Concerti with Rampa! and Scimone was recorded about a decade ago and was available for a time in a pressing by Columbia. Don't let the set's age bother you: the sound is impeccable. and I've never heard Jean-Pierre play more winningly. One says a vocalist is '' in good voice;' are flutists "in good embouchure? " If so, Jean-Pierre is here.

It is thought that with his oboe concerti, around the turn of the eighteenth century. that Tomaso Albinoni inaugurated the solo wind concerto. Who is supposed to have written the first flute concerto? It was in this century that the transverse flute caught on, replaced the recorder. and for a while was as popular as the guitar in the 1960's. Louis Hotteterre wrote a method for it in 1707; by then it was being made with a conical bore and with three separable joints. It was part of the concerti no of Bach· s fifth Brandenburg Concerto in 1717 (though here Bach was, in effect. superimposing the common violin­flute-keyboard combination of the trio-sonata on the string orchestra.) Vivaldi's Op. 10 came out about 1730. though God knows when it was written. Following the invention of such necessities as the cork screw-stopper and the wooden head-joint tuning slide (why does this stuff always sound like P.D.Q. Bach?) J.J. Quantz wrote 300 concerti for flute, every one of which Frederick the Gross played badly, night after night, for four decades.

But by that time Vivaldi was dead--and he didn't know how lucky he was.

As with most of the unpublished Vivaldi concerti. there is precious little concrete fact available about the six works played here. P. 118 in G major was transcribed (apparently by the composer) from a ·cello concerto. The material submitted to me says that P. 80 is in F minor. but Pincherle calls it A minor and the incipit that he quotes seems to bear him out. Perhaps because it was the first one I encountered. P. 205 (in D) particularly ·took my fancy. There is something very fresh and springlike about the opening movement; there is also some interesting writing and a devil of a flute part which Rampal tosses off with aplomb. (I see I've written "Whoopee I" on my scratch sheet.) The second movement is equally lovely--1 am reminded. however faintly. of the accompaniment to Orfeo's "Che puro ciel" in the second act of Gluck's opera-though the third reverts to sewing machine music with its robot rhythms and inevitable scale passages. The F minor begins in a tense darkness and the slow movement has a curious introduction. The flute-bass duos are particularly appealing in the middle movements of P. 118 (which has a tumultuous finale). P. 140. and P. 203. P. 440's finale begins with a massive Handelian stateliness into which the flute suddenly interjects itself life some street-urchin doing cartwheels in the midst of a coronation. Altogether better than some Vivaldi programs I've been subjected to.

VIVALDI: WORKS FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA, Vol. II

Jean-Pierre Rampal, Flute

I Solisti Veneti

Claudio Scimone, Director

ERATO

Vivaldi's music for flute and orchestra, Vol. 1 proved to be a smashing success. We are certain that Vol. II will prove just as popular.

When Vivaldi arrived on the scene, the solo concerto was in its infancy in which the soloist and orchestra confronted each other on an almost equal basis. Vivaldi took the achievements of his predecessors and incorporated them into something grander. For the first time the writing for the soloist was well written and dramatic. And what a soloist we have on this recording; the amazing Jean-Pierre Rampal!

Each of the six concertos on this disc has its own charm and character, and all will delight and entertain.