Venice Baroque Orchestra and Violinist Nicola Benedetti Venture Beyond the Four Seasons

Ushering in this season's Baroque music in grand style, the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center Presenting Series again welcomes the outstanding Venice Baroque Orchestra under the direction of the Baroque scholar and harpsichordist Andrea Marcon. Scottish violin sensation Nicola Benedettiguests in this season's sole chamber orchestra concert, February 19 at 2 p.m. in the Leighton Concert Hall.

Founded in 1997 by Baroque scholar and harpsichordist Andrea Marcon, the Venice Baroque Orchestra (VBO) is recognized as one of the world's finest period instrument ensembles. Committed to the rediscovery of 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces, VBO goes beyond Venice's renowned native son, Antonio Vivaldi, and his famous Seasons to collect the relationships and influences of his contemporaries into one program. Storms, birds, frost, the hunt, and rustic revelry can be found in a good number of Vivaldi's solo concerti for violin and orchestra. Experience all the wildness and fury as well as the heart-breaking vulnerability of Baroque music as expressed by the orchestra's playful attack and the eloquent violin of Benedetti.

The program opens with Galuppi's Concerto a Quattro No. 2 in G Major, one of seven such works that he wrote sometime around 1740. The scoring for two violins, viola, and cello, at times supplemented in performance by a Baroque-style basso continuo, anticipates that for string quartet. Coming into prominence after Vivaldi's death in 1741, Galuppi established a reputation as one of Europe's most prolific and celebrated stage composers, collaborating on several successful comic operas. In his instrumental music for keyboard and assorted chamber ensembles, Galuppi helped shift tastes toward the elegantly uncomplicated galant style that appealed to both refined amateurs and the aristocratic elite.

That same accessibility is evident in Charles Avison's understated and elegant Concerto Grosso No. 8 for Strings in E Minor, "after D. Scarlatti." While Avison was a lifelong resident of Newcastle upon Tyne a steady stream of visiting Italian musicians ensured that the new genre, known as the concerto grosso, or "large concerto," quickly gained traction in England. As Avison and his contemporaries understood it, a concerto pitted two groups of performers against each other in a kind of friendly competition and the expressive Italian style of the times comes through in instrumental pyrotechnics.

Avison was a student of Francesco Geminiani, the program's next composer. Likewise, Geminiani was a student of acclaimed violinist Arcangelo Corelli. Corelli's influence was so great that Geminiani arranged his teacher's Op. 5 violin sonatas from 1700 as a set of 12 concerti grossi by the late 1720s. The Concerto Grosso in D Minor, which gradually builds in energy and ornamentation, is one of them.

The cleverly ordered program of artistic associations come full circle with Corelli's Concerto Grosso in D Major, Op. 6 No. 4. Arguably the most influential composer of the Baroque era, his work in the "church" sonata tradition of slow-fast-slow-fast movements dazzles and offers flashes of drama on its way to a surprising, energetic finale.

Program

Galuppi

Concerto a Quattro No. 2 in G Major

Avison

Concerto grosso No. 8 in E Minor, after D. Scarlatti

Geminiani

Concerto grosso for strings in D Minor, "La Follia"
(after A. Corelli Op. V No. 12)

Vivaldi

Concerto in D Major for violin, strings and basso continuo, RV 211

Corelli

Concerto grosso in D Major, Op. VI, No. 4

Vivaldi

Concerto in E-flat Major for violin, strings and basso continuo, RV 257
Concerto in B Minor for violin, strings and basso continuo, RV 386
Conterto in D Major for violin, strings and basso continuo, "Il Grosso Mogul", RV 208

Ticket Information

Regular tickets are $45. Child/student tickets are $15. Visit performingarts.nd.edu/newseason for more information or call the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center Ticket Office at (574) 631-2800 Monday-Friday, noon-6 p.m.

About the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Since opening in September 2004, the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center has become an integral part of the University's vision and commitment to becoming a preeminent research university. It is the University's leading presenter of world-class artistic programming, one with an institutional focus on contemporary works. As an academic space, the center enhances the scholarship, teaching, and practice of the performing and cinematic arts. As a community space, the center welcomes more than 100,000 patrons annually, including thousands of K-12 students in education and related artistic programs. Presenting Series and Browning Cinema programs are curated to increase the center's capacity to educate, enlighten and engage.

Third Coast Percussion at Notre Dame is made possible through the generosity of Shari and Tom Crotty. Additional support for the Presenting Series provided by media sponsor WSBT-TV; visiting artist accommodations by The Morris Inn, program printing underwriting by Express Press Inc., WNIT Public Television, and Grass Roots Media.

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