Don’t be fooled. Tonight’s show is a setup. You are not sitting in the cloister of a Mallorcan convent. In fact, when you start listening to the music with half-closed eyes, you will notice that you have been invited to a Venetian palace. You are sitting in the midst of Venetian nobles, merchants, visitors and friends of the household. The lord wants to show his palace’s greatness and invited you today. He also invited the region’s most renowned musicians: Claudio Monteverdi and Antonio Vivaldi.

They both have always surrounded themselves with the best performers, aware that their music excels in skilled and trained hands. This evening, they have decided to show an assorted bouquet of their compositions, although Mr. Monteverdi (1567 – 1743) is merely attending as the artist of the San Marco chapel in Venice and is ready to show you the new musical resources he has devised, which he also implements to sacred music. As a result, this Adoramus te, SV 289 transcription for strings will show that the beautiful imitative counterpoint from the Renaissance (known as prima practica) is already left behind while it turns towards modernity—towards voices and instruments’ harmonic, vertical chords: la seconda practica. You will witness the subtlety created in the harmonic movements, designed to build emotion-capturer tensions and resolutions.

The other guest, maestro Antonio Vivaldi (1648 – 1741), is melody conjurer, mesmerizing with his Adagio from the Violin Concerto in A major RV 768, the strings on an ostinato, almost a feather-light harmonic shadow. The Violin Concerto in A minor RV 356 is one of the best known to students of this instrument, and he already works here on two common elements in his music: the ritornello form and the melodic drawing’s beauty and expressiveness.

You will definitely acknowledge the fascinating melodies of the concerts called The Four Seasons. Based on four sonnets apparently written by the composer himself, they describe the scenes that each concert will illustrate with music. What may not be as well known is that these are the first four in a group of twelve concerts known as l cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione, published in 1725. Its title discloses what Vivaldi wants to show in this collection: the foundations of a beautiful and well-crafted harmony, and at the same time, a language open to imagination and fantasy.

Throughout The Four Seasons one can hear autumn’s birds, streams, storms, dances and gracefulness, as well as winter’s shivering cold. This music draws up descriptions over the ensemble members interplay, either all playing at the same time (tutti), with fewer instruments’ sonority (concertant) or playing solo, which is sometimes performed by two instruments almost in dialogue, as in the Spring‘s first movement. One of the elements used by Vivaldi in these concerts is the aforementioned ritornello form, a structure that presents a repeated section (refrain), which allows these solo sections or soloists to be embedded right in the middle. The alternation of fast/slow movements is always present.

All these approaches to sound liaison can also be noticed in the superb Violin in D minor RV 813 Concert. Six earlier produced movements (c.1705-1710) with varying tempos structure it and approach the concept of instrumental suite, although Vivaldi names it a concert. Perhaps because he truly thinks rather of the current instrumental solo part, which is indeed more common in a concerto form.

This evening, maestro Vivaldi also shares three gems within his oeuvre: the improvised Prelude and the second movement of the Violin in minor RV 357 Concert, the «Tempesta di mare» from the opera La fida nymph and «II Ciaconna» from the Violin RV 370 Concert.

However, he knows his melodies will still live for a long time in your head and your life upon leaving this Venetian courtyard.