Still reviewing my CD finds from half-price day at the Friends of the Multnomah County Library Annual Booksale.
Veracini: Overtures 1-4 & 6
Accademia I Filarmonici
Alberto Martini, Conductor
These aren't overtures as in the music that comes before an opera, but concert overtures. In the Baroque period, the overture was kind of a proto-symphony -- a piece of fifteen minutes or so for a small orchestra, made up of several loosely related movements.
So no, I had never heard of Veracini either. He's good, though. These are baroque pieces that sound like, well, good baroque music. Even you classical music dorks, if I told you that it was Scarlatti or Gabrielli or whatever, you wouldn't doubt me. Unless you're really good, I could probably pass it off as Brandenburg Concerto style Bach. Ol' Veracini seems to have been a good orchestrator with a solid command of piece writing, a good feel for the standard forms of his day, and an occasional surprise up his sleeve.
Prognosis: Pleasant music worth keeping around. Plus, having written the above likely puts me among the top thousand Veracini scholars of my generation, which is cool.
Veracini: Overtures 1-4 & 6
Accademia I Filarmonici
Alberto Martini, Conductor
These aren't overtures as in the music that comes before an opera, but concert overtures. In the Baroque period, the overture was kind of a proto-symphony -- a piece of fifteen minutes or so for a small orchestra, made up of several loosely related movements.
So no, I had never heard of Veracini either. He's good, though. These are baroque pieces that sound like, well, good baroque music. Even you classical music dorks, if I told you that it was Scarlatti or Gabrielli or whatever, you wouldn't doubt me. Unless you're really good, I could probably pass it off as Brandenburg Concerto style Bach. Ol' Veracini seems to have been a good orchestrator with a solid command of piece writing, a good feel for the standard forms of his day, and an occasional surprise up his sleeve.
Prognosis: Pleasant music worth keeping around. Plus, having written the above likely puts me among the top thousand Veracini scholars of my generation, which is cool.
The L&TM5K Advent Calendar
December 17
From the InLaw5000 family collection of vintage postcards.Seventh Night
The obvious question regarding your Veracini cd is, of course, why not overture #5?
ReplyDeleteThat is certainly the obvious question. I vascilate between:
ReplyDeletea) Overture #5 is the secret overture that the Veracini people don't want you to hear!, and
b) in order to get everything to fit, they had to put #5, which is shorter or longer or something, on Volume 2.
Okay. I'm listening to the secret overture that the Veracini people don't want me to hear right now! (I just thought I'd mention it here in case something mysterious happens to me.)
ReplyDeleteI'm really liking it. It's almost enough to make one wonder why he's not, you know, canonical. Maybe the rest of his oeuvre is all the same? (However, having bought 99 Vivaldi songs recently, it doesn't seem as though that necessarily precludes canonicity.)
Stravinsky famously (if bitchily) said that Vivaldi didn't write 400 (or 500, depending on who's writing) concerti, he wrote the same concerto 400 times.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that Vivaldi wrote any songs, though (I say, bitchily)....