![]() ![]() The Vivaldi Project should record more works of Maddalena Sirmen and John Antes as soon as possible. In fact, I would urge anyone who thinks he “doesn’t like period instruments” to give any of these discs a listen they might change minds.Īll the rest of the music on this album of rare composers is worth hearing once, but that of the Venetian lady and the American missionary show such fire and originality as to be listened to repeatedly. All period string playing should sound like this. ![]() The strong musical values of the previous volumes of the series are still in place: exuberance, tightly knit ensemble, good intonation, and a warm and expressive singing line. All of which is to say that if you ever meet one of those folks who claim that “American music began with Charles Ives,” just show him this. This is no dilettante’s music and is, at the very least, on a par with anything being composed in Europe during this time. Antes’s D-Minor Trio has quirky rhythmic drive in the outer movements surrounding a Mozartean cantilena in the central one. He apparently composed his chamber trios while doing missionary work in Egypt, and they are believed to be the earliest chamber music written by an American. John Antes (1740–1811) was a member of the Moravians, a very old Protestant religious body that established a beachhead in Pennsylvania. Thanks to the Vivaldi Project, we are now aware of a composer of highly accomplished, remarkably original chamber music in colonial America. ![]() I have never heard anything like this, certainly not in 18th-century music.īut there is an even bigger surprise. She essentially fuses together a rondo and a minuet, both in different meters and alternating in blocks throughout the movement. The second movement of this piece is so unusual that I had to listen to it several times to understand what Sirmen was doing. Her trio contains striking textural and tempo shifts and formal experimentation that presage Beethoven. The first surprise is a trio by the Tartini pupil, violinist and singer Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen (1745–1818), who was a product of one of the Venetian ospedali that cared for female orphans. The group’s cellist, Stephanie Vial, sees these pieces as effecting a transition between the Baroque trio sonata and the Classical string quartet. The earlier trios tend to be for two violins and cello, while the later ones settle into the now standard format of violin, viola, and cello. The series has made us aware of a large repertoire of trios for strings in the late Baroque, Rococo, and Classical eras. The musicians of the Vivaldi Project are now on the third installment in their enlightening series Discovering the Classical String Trio. Reviews of Discovering the Classical String Trio, vol. ![]()
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January 2023
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