Vivaldi: Vespers for St. Mark's in Venice

Born in Venice in 1678, Antonio Vivaldi learned the violin with his father, who was appointed violinist of the Basilica of St. Mark in 1685. Antonio, a precocious child, was soon admitted to the Doge's Chapel with his father. It was therefore under the mosaics of the domes of the Basilica of Saint Mark that he took his first steps as an instrumentalist. This gave him the opportunity to become familiar very early on with Venice’s most sumptuous liturgy. Throughout his rich career in opera, and in parallel to his position as composer and conductor of the Ospedale della Pieta, Vivaldi composed a great deal of sacred music, the destination of which is not specified: but it is certain that the reputation of the Red Priest carried his scores as far as San Marco ...

He wrote a number of Motets for the Vespers Office, which was one of the most important in Venice, and for which Monteverdi wrote the first music masterpiece. Some of these works are traditionally bravura pieces, such as the Dixit Dominus and the Magnificat, in which Vivaldi displays inventiveness, virtuosity and monumentality: their interpreters must have been the best in Venice. The programme of motets here revives a Vespers service as Vivaldi could have organised in San Marco, for the feast of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice: the sumptuousness of Venetian ceremonies can be heard here in the echoes of the vaults and domes, precious marbles and golden mosaics of the Basilica. Leonardo García Alarcon revives this flamboyance in an extraordinary reconstruction, whose festive dimension is on a par with the Serenissima ...