Flute Concerto in F (La tempesta di mare)

Several of the best-known concertos by Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) benefit from descriptive titles. For instance, under the designation La tempesta di mare (“Storm at Sea”), Vivaldi produced several different works. One is a violin concerto that appeared in the famous Opus 8 collection (1725) that includes The Four Seasons. There is also a Flute Concerto in F that he wrote to feature the transverse style of flute. That work is itself a later version of material dating to 1715, when Vivaldi created a Concerto Grosso for flute, oboe, violin, bassoon, and continuo, RV 98. At the earlier date Vivaldi seems to have favored recorder over flute—related instruments, of course, but that’s a topic for another day—and RV 98 is often performed with recorder. The exact same music, albeit with another slight change in scoring, turns up one last time as the Concerto Grosso, RV 570, heard this evening.
The work unfolds in three brief movements following the familiar fast-slow-fast pattern. The first Allegro sprints by in a flurry of 16th-note scales punctuated by virtuosic duet writing for recorder and oboe. Harmonies remain firmly grounded on tonic and dominant chords linked together by Vivaldi’s signature musical sequences. The entire movement crashes to a halt unceremoniously at an incomplete cadence, out of which the dolorous Largo in D minor emerges. The Largo is a brief respite between lively faster movements, a series of plaintive descending lines sung out by solo recorder. Moments later the tempest resumes in earnest for the final Presto led by strings. Toward the close Vivaldi again highlights the recorder with brilliant rising glissandi that pierce the texture like lightning against darkened clouds. Even if one does not take the “Storm at Sea” interpretation to heart, one can still relish the dramatic power of Vivaldi’s concerto form, which remains his greatest gift to posterity.

(c) Jason Stell