CDA67073 - Disc 1 Track 5 - Concerto funebre in B flat major, RV579

Concerto funebre in B flat major, RV579

composer

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

mid-1720s; for oboe, chalumeau, violin, three viole all’inglese and strings

Recordings

Vivaldi: Concerti con molti istromenti

The King's Consort, Robert King (conductor)

Buy by post £6.99 CDH55439 Helios (Hyperion's budget label)

Details

Movement 1: Largo – Allegro poco poco – Adagio

Katharina Spreckelsen (oboe), Colin Lawson (chalumeau), Elizabeth Wallfisch (violin), Katherine McGillivray (viola all'inglese), Jane Norman (viola all'inglese), Jane Coe (viola all'inglese), The King's Consort, Robert King (conductor)

Track 4 on CDH55439 [4'28] Helios (Hyperion's budget label)

Movement 2: Allegro

Track 5 on CDH55439 [2'14] Helios (Hyperion's budget label)

Concerto funebre in B flat major, RV579

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The evocative Concerto funebre, RV579, was probably written in the mid-1720s for performance at the funeral of a patron or governor of the Pietà. The highly original, indeed unique, combination of a muted oboe, a tenor chalumeau and a trio (two soprano instruments and one bass) of viole all’inglese, accompanied by muted strings, lends this work a suitably lugubrious tone, which is only lightened a little when the mutes come off for the fourth movement. The slow opening movement is an adaptation of a sinfonia for a solemn procession to an execution in Vivaldi’s opera Tito Manlio (1719), while the fourth movement borrows the material of the finale of the Concerto without soloist RV123.