Playing Doubles

Thursday 3 September, 7.30pm–c9.00pm

Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in D major for two violins, RV 513 15’

George Frideric Handel
Concerto grosso in B flat major, Op. 3 No. 2 12’

Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in D minor for two violins, RV 514 11’

George Frideric Handel
Radamisto – Passacaille 5’

Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in A minor for two oboes, RV 536 7’

Charles Avison
Concerto grosso No. 5 in D minor 11’
(after D. Scarlatti)

Johann Sebastian Bach
Concerto in D minor for two violins, BWV 1043 15’

Nicola Benedetti violin
Kati Debretzeni violin
Rodolfo Richter violin
Matthew Truscott violin
Katharina Spreckelsen oboe
Sarah Humphrys oboe

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Jonathan Cohen director/harpsichord

Alina Ibragimova, one of the advertised soloists, has had to withdraw from tonight’s performance owing to a family bereavement. The 91훑괵 Proms is grateful to Kati Debretzeni, Rodolfo Richter and Matthew Truscott for taking her place at short notice.

This concert is broadcast live by 91훑괵 Radio 3 and on 91훑괵 Four at 8.00pm. You can listen to any of the 2020 Proms concerts on 91훑괵 Sounds or watch on 91훑괵 iPlayer until Monday 12 October.

Welcome to tonight’s Prom

The ornate Royal Albert Hall auditorium is an ideal space to explore the clean harmonies and the decorative melodies of the Baroque concerto. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, one of the UK’s foremost period-instrument ensembles, is joined by leading violinist Nicola Benedetti and soloists drawn from the orchestra to perform two-violin concertos by Vivaldi and Bach – Bach’s concerto being composed following a study of Vivaldi.

In addition to one of only three concertos Vivaldi wrote for two oboes, we hear concerti grossi by Handel (borrowing material from his own Brockes Passion) and Newcastle-born Charles Avison (responding to the Italian style made fashionable in England by Domenico Scarlatti). Jonathan Cohen directs from the harpsichord in his third Proms appearance.

Welcome to tonight's Prom

Antonio Vivaldi

Concerto in D major
for two violins, RV 513
^{_{(date unknown)}}

1 Vivace
2 Largo
3 Allegro
4 [no tempo indication]
5 [no tempo indication]

Handel came to the concerto at a different angle from Vivaldi: he wrote no solo concertos at all, and frequently adopted a rather haphazard approach to compiling and ordering his concertos. Each of his six Op. 3 concertos, published in 1734, features a different solo grouping (or rather groupings, as they often change from movement to movement), and indeed they were largely put together from assorted existing orchestral pieces.

No. 2 is the set’s most convincing assemblage, and may have been one of the unidentified ‘new’ concertos Handel performed in public concerts in London in 1718–19. Yet even then it would have been a hybrid, the first and third movements having already served as the overture to his Brockes Passion of 1716. The second movement, a beautiful Largo for solo oboe supported by two billowing cello lines, is an inspired insertion. A minuet follows, and finally a gavotte with two sunnily uplifting variations.

George Frideric Handel ^{_{(1685–1759)}}

Concerto grosso in B flat major,
Op. 3 No. 2
^{_{(published 1734)}}

1 Allegro non molto
2 Adagio
3 Allegro molto

Nicola Benedetti violin
Rodolfo Richter violin

Vivaldi’s Double Concerto, RV 513, employs all the same duet-writing techniques as RV 514, which opened tonight’s concert, but does so in a much more flamboyant and overtly virtuosic way. The writing for the soloists is generally more high-lying and frenetic, sometimes leaving the orchestra behind to indulge in fantasia-like displays and musical feats more complex than those achievable by a single player. There is one stand-out moment in the third movement, however, when the second violin falls back into the orchestra and the first, like a gentle shaft of light, introduces a sweetly turned new melody all its own.

Antonio Vivaldi ^{_{(1678–1741)}}

Concerto in D minor
for two violins, RV 514
^{_{(date unknown)}}

First performance at the Proms

1 Allegro non molto
2 Adagio
3 Allegro molto

Kati Debretzeni violin
Nicola Benedetti violin

Since the time of Beethoven the concerto has generally been seen as a work for one heroic soloist and orchestra. But, when the form first emerged in Italy in the years around 1700, it was just as likely to feature two soloists or more. Tonight’s Prom explores the repertoire of double concertos from the hands of some of the greatest Baroque masters of the genre.

Venice (Piazza San Giovanni e Paolo)by Canaletto

Venice (the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo) as captured by Canaletto in 1725; Vivaldi was born and spent most of his life in the city (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Bridgeman Images)

Venice (as captured by Canaletto in 1725), where Vivaldi spent most of his life

The Venetian-born Vivaldi and his north-Italian contemporaries were at the forefront of the early development of the concerto and, although well over 200 solo violin concertos make up the largest part of his output, he also wrote 27 concertos for two violins. He published few of them, and they are infrequently performed today, yet they present facets of his creative personality not always evident in his better-known works.

Tonight’s two concertos demonstrate Vivaldi’s usual method of writing for two soloists on similar instruments: while rapid interchanges of phrases and melodic fragments echo, overlap and swap over with each other, the two soloists are almost always given meticulously equal treatment – as heard in the virtuosic outer movements of RV 514 or its melodious and darkly expressive second movement – with neither assuming a dominant role over the other.

George Frideric Handel

Radamisto – Passacaille
^{₍₁₇₂₀₎}

First performance at the Proms

Radamisto, premiered at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, in April 1720, was Handel’s sixth Italian opera for the London stage following his arrival in this country in 1710. With a typical tale of dynastic infighting, love-tangles, vicious betrayal and heroic self-sacrifice in 1st-century Asia Minor (loosely based on an episode from Tacitus’s Annals), it was a lavish production and a considerable success for Handel, with further revivals coming the following season and again in 1728. The opera is striking for the strength and beauty of its arias, but its orchestral scoring is also unusually rich.

The Passacaille (or passacaglia) we hear tonight is an entr’acte written for the first 1720 production and is a type of orchestral movement based on steadily repeating bass patterns that is more usually associated with French opera than Italian. Handel’s version of it is seductively attractive and, although he did not keep the piece in the later revivals, it did resurface in a ballet entitled Terpsicore in 1734, and in chamber-music form as a movement in one of his Op. 5 Trio Sonatas, published five years after that.

Antonio Vivaldi

Concerto in A minor
for two oboes and orchestra, RV 536
^{_{(date unknown)}}

First performance at the Proms

1 Allegro
2 Largo
3 Allegro

Katharina Spreckelsen oboe
Sarah Humphrys oboe

The oboe only became a regular member of the orchestra in the early decades of the 18th century, and Vivaldi’s 19 concertos for the instrument, alongside those of Albinoni, were among the first of their kind. He also wrote three concertos for two oboes, although in the A minor Concerto the way the soloists travel around in unbroken parallel motion, coupled with a level of virtuosity pitched lower than in the double violin concertos, makes them seem more like one rich-toned instrument, especially in the liltingly caressing central Largo.

Charles Avison ^_(1709–70)

Concerto grosso No. 5
in D minor (after D. Scarlatti)
^{_{(published 1744)}}

First performance at the Proms

1 Largo
2 Allegro
3 Andante moderato
4 Allegro

The majority of concertos by the Newcastle-based composer Charles Avison reveal him as a firm disciple of the elegantly conversational ‘concerto grosso’ type for a small group of soloists, forged in the 1680s by Arcangelo Corelli. But he was also a canny entrepreneur, and in 1744 published a set of 12 concertos fashioned from the single-movement harpsichord sonatas of the Neapolitan-born, Spanish-resident composer Domenico Scarlatti, then highly popular in England. ‘Being extremely difficult,’ wrote Avison of Scarlatti’s brilliantly original and virtuosic creations, ‘and many delightful Passages [being] entirely disguised, either with capricious Divisions, or an unnecessary Repetition in many Places, few performers are able to execute them with that Taste and Correctness they require.’

But, although Avison’s orchestral arrangements ironed out some of Scarlatti’s endearing quirks by means of discreet cuts and smoothings, making the pieces a little more politely English in the process, the Iberian spirit of the originals is still detectable. The fifth concerto makes use in its second, third and fourth movements of three Scarlatti sonatas (Kk 11, 41 and 5) that were available in print at the time – but the opening Largo is either original Avison or based on another Scarlatti sonata now lost.

Johann Sebastian Bach ^{_{(1685–1750)}}

Concerto in D minor
for two violins, BWV 1043
^{_{(date unknown)}}

1 Vivace
2 Largo ma non tanto
3 Allegro

Matthew Truscott violin
Nicola Benedetti violin

The most famous of all double violin concertos is a perfect example of how Bach took the formal model presented by Vivaldi, extended its dimensions and enriched its texture, as only he could, by means of the most vital and satisfying counterpoint.

The first movement of his D minor Concerto – possibly written for the court orchestra in Cöthen, where Bach worked from 1717 to 1723, or for the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, the concert-giving society that he took charge of in 1729 – goes so far as to cast its opening orchestral paragraph in the form of a fugal exposition (the theme, starting with a rising scale figure, passed around all parts in quick succession), and carries the contrapuntal discourse on into the dialogue between the two soloists.

The central slow movement is nothing less than one of Bach’s most miraculous creations, a sublimely poetic and skilfully interwoven duet for the soloists over a gently pulsing accompaniment. And the finale is a joyous scramble in which the soloists again chase each other in close, almost frenzied imitation of one another.

^{Programme notes © Lindsay Kemp}^{Lindsay Kemp is a producer for 91훑괵 Radio 3, Artistic Director of the Baroque at the Edge festival and a regular contributor to ‘Gramophone’.}

Biographies

Jonathan Cohen harpsichord/director

Jonathan Cohen *(Marco Borggreve)*
Jonathan Cohen *(Marco Borggreve)*

Jonathan Cohen has established a varied career as a conductor, cellist and keyboard player. Alongside his passion for chamber music, he is equally at home in Baroque opera and the Classical symphonic repertoire. He is Artistic Director of Arcangelo, Music Director of Les Violons du Roy, Quebec, Artistic Director of the Tetbury Festival and Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota.

He appears regularly with his ensemble Arcangelo, which he founded in 2010, including at Carnegie Hall, New York, Wigmore Hall, London, Berlin Philharmonie, Cologne Philharmonie and Vienna Musikverein, as well as at the Salzburg Festival. In 2018 he directed the ensemble at the Proms in a performance of Handel’s Theodora. Together, they also have a busy recording schedule, with recent releases including cantatas based on the myth of Ariadne with mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and a Grammy-nominated release of Buxtehude’s Op. 1 Trio Sonatas.

This year’s performances include visits to the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. He also makes his debut with Berlin Staatsoper performing Orfeo with the Freiburger Barockorchester and Vocalconsort Berlin in a production by Sasha Waltz Company and continues his collaboration with Les Violons du Roy.

Nicola Benedetti violin

Nicola Benedetti *(Andy Gotts)*
Nicola Benedetti *(Andy Gotts)*

Nicola Benedetti was born in Scotland of Italian heritage. She began violin lessons at the age of 5 and went on to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School. She is now one of the most sought-after and popular violinists of her generation.

Conductors with whom she has worked include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Jiří Bělohlávek, Christoph Eschenbach, James Gaffigan, Valery Gergiev, Alan Gilbert, Jakub Hrůša, Vladimir Jurowski, Zubin Mehta, Vasily Petrenko, Donald Runnicles, Pinchas Zukerman and Jaap van Zweden.

This season she made her debut with the Vienna Symphony and toured Asia with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Robin Ticciati. She also appeared with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Klaus Mäkelä, London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski and London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas. Next season she is due to give the premiere of Mark Simpson’s Violin Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda.

91훑괵 Young Musician of the Year 2004 and winner of a GRAMMY (for Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto) and two Classical BRIT Awards, she has recorded concertos by Bruch, Glazunov, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Szymanowski and Tchaikovsky. She recently launched the Benedetti Foundation, supporting music education for young people and teachers. She became the youngest ever recipient of the Queen’s Medal for Music in 2016 and was made CBE last year. She plays the 1717 ‘Gariel’ Stradivari violin.

Kati Debretzeni violin
Proms Debut Artist

Kati Debretzeni began playing the violin in her native Romania before completing her studies in Israel. she is one of the Leaders of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and has collaborated with conductors such as William Christie, Ottavio Dantone, Ádám Fischer, Iván Fischer, Vladimir Jurowski and Sir Simon Rattle. In addition, since 2000 she has been Leader of the English Baroque Soloists, with which she has performed around the world under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She recently recorded violin concertos by J. S. Bach (including her own arrangement of the Harpsichord Concerto, BWV 1053) with the EBS to critical acclaim.

She has directed the OAE from the violinist’s chair in works ranging from Baroque repertoire to Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, and has recorded Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the group. She is in demand internationally as leader, soloist and director with groups across Europe, as well as in Canada. A keen chamber musician, she has recorded award-winning CDs with the ensembles Florilegium and Ricordo. For the past decade she has been a member of Trio Goya alongside fortepianist Maggie Cole and cellist Sebastian Comberti. She has given masterclasses in Canada, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Norway and the UK, and is a faculty member of the Royal Conservatory, The Hague.

Sarah Humphrys oboe
Proms Debut Artist

Born in Devon, Sarah Humphrys studied Baroque oboe, recorder and shawm at the Royal College of Music in London and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. She now enjoys a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player and teacher.

She performs throughout Europe with her two chamber groups – Ensemble Meridiana, the recipients of three major international chamber music awards, and the recorder quintet Fontanella. She also plays with period-instrument ensembles such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Gabrieli Consort & Players, I Fagiolini, The Sixteen, La Nuova Musica and The English Concert.

She has performed as a principal player in seasons at Shakespeare’s Globe since 2003 and has appeared on soundtracks including Shrek the Third and Wolf Hall.

Rodolfo Richter violin
Proms Debut Artist

British/Brazilian violinist Rodolfo Richter is a frequent guest director and soloist appearing internationally, including with the Academy of Ancient Music, Arion (Montreal), B’Rock (Ghent), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Tafelmusik (Toronto), Portland Baroque Orchestra, Tesserae (Los Angeles) and Seville Baroque Orchestra.

He performs and collaborates regularly with artists including Kristian Bezuidenhout, Giuliano Carmignola, Roel Dieltiens, Richard Egarr, Bernarda Fink, Karina Gauvin, Alexander Melnikov and Sonia Prina. For 10 years he was Leader of both the Academy of Ancient Music and B’Rock, as well as Professor of Baroque Violin at the Royal College of Music in London. Currently he tours worldwide with his Richter Ensemble and is music director of the Early Music Course and Festival at the Oficina de Música de Curitiba in Brazil.

Katharina Spreckelsen oboe
Proms Debut Artist

Katharina Spreckelsen
Katharina Spreckelsen

Katharina Spreckelsen was born in Germany and, after studying with Michel Piguet in Basel, moved to London for further studies with Paul Goodwin at the Royal College of Music.

She was Principal Oboist with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Gabrieli Consort & Players and Florilegium and she now divides her time between The English Concert, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company.

She can be heard on many of Ton Koopman’s Bach cantata recordings. With the Gabrieli Consort & Players she has recorded sacred works by J. S. Bach, oratorios by Handel and Haydn’s The Creation. With The English Concert she appears on discs with Lucy Crowe, David Daniels, Danielle de Niese and Elizabeth Watts.

Katharina Spreckelsen is Professor of Baroque and Classical Oboe at the Royal Academy of Music.

Matthew Truscott violin

Matthew Truscott is a versatile violinist who splits his time between period-instrument and ‘modern’ performance, appearing with some of the finest musicians in both fields. He is Concertmaster of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and one of the Leaders of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

As a guest leader he has worked with Arcangelo, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Le Concert d’Astrée, Dutch National Opera, The English Concert, English National Opera, The King’s Consort and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. He is also the Leader of Classical Opera, St James’ Baroque and the Magdalena Consort.

Recent chamber music recordings include a set of Purcell Trio Sonatas with the Retrospect Trio, a disc of J. S. Bach with Trevor Pinnock, Emmanuel Pahud and Jonathan Manson, and a Haydn Piano Trio with Richard Lester and Simon Crawford-Phillips. He teaches Baroque Violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was formed in 1986 by a group of period instrument players in London. It does not have a principal conductor, rather choosing to work with musicians individually.

The ensemble plays on period-specific instruments but Baroque and Classical music make up just one strand of its repertoire – performance formats, rehearsal approaches and musical techniques are all examined afresh; projects have ranged from Bach without a conductor to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

As well as being resident orchestra at the Southbank Centre, the OAE is Associate Orchestra of Glyndebourne and enjoys a range of other associations and residencies around the country. Since 2008 it has been based at London’s Kings Place, which has fostered further creativity including Six Chapters of Enlightenment, which explores the music, science and philosophy of the Golden Age from which the orchestra takes its name.

In addition to making numerous recordings, the orchestra has toured across Europe and run an innovative series of informal late-night concerts, The Night Shift. The OAE Experience scheme gives young instrumentalists the opportunity to play with the orchestra, while the Rising Stars of the Enlightenment programme, launched in the 2017–18 season, allows eight young singers the chance to perform with the orchestra over two seasons.

Violins
Kati Debretzeni
Matthew Truscott
Iona Davies
Debbie Diamond
Daniel Edgar
Alice Evans
Margaret Faultless
Claire Holden
Julia Kuhn
Rodolfo Richter
Andrew Roberts
Henry Tong
Violas
Annette Isserlis
Martin Kelly
Kate Heller
Marina Ascherson
Cellos
Jonathan Manson
Andrew Skidmore
Helen Verney
Double Basses
Christine Sticher
Cecelia Bruggemeyer
Oboes
Katharina Spreckelsen
Sarah Humphrys
Bassoon
Sally Jackson
Theorbo/Guitar
David Miller
Harpsichord
Steven Devine

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