Hyperion Records

RV562—composed, according to its title, for the feast of St Lawrence—was copied out by Pisendel during his Venetian sojourn of 1716/7. It may therefore relate to the celebration of this martyr’s feast on 9/10 August 1716. Since, according to its liturgical calendar, the Pietà did not celebrate this feast with music (other than chant), it is very possible that Vivaldi composed the concerto for the Venetian convent dedicated to the saint, and that either he or Pisendel took the prominent solo violin part. The written-out cadenza for the third movement recycles material used earlier in that of the Concerto RV208. Such self-borrowing was facilitated by the fact that cadenzas acquired the habit of referring directly to the main material of the movement only much later in the century; being athematic, they possessed a ‘passe-partout’ quality.

from notes by Michael Talbot © 1998