Winter SPARKS – Notes on the Program

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The Golden Age of Concerti

by Alan Choo & Jeannette Sorrell

The Baroque period was the golden era for the concerto genre, as composers pushed the technical and expressive boundaries of all kinds of instruments, thereby attaining new heights in virtuosity and dramatic possibilities. Today’s program aims to fire up your cold, wintry day with a selection of concertos featuring the baroque flute, oboe, violin and cello.

We begin our journey with Antonio Vivaldi’s Sinfonia in G minor RV 157, whereby the entire band comprising strings and continuo acts as the “soloist”, with fast, fiery passages in all instrumental parts. Vivaldi wrote around 40 string sinfonias, mostly in three short movements. The opening Allegro of his G minor Sinfonia employs the use of a ground bass – a repeating bassline above which the higher parts spin out inventive musical material and melodies. Throughout this movement (and also the third movement), both first and second violins trade off the same material, as if in fierce duel as equal partners. The second movement offers brief moments of respite from the action, but Vivaldi maintains a certain dramatic intensity with chains of suspensions in the violins, whereby dissonant intervals are hit unapologetically and resolved, only for the cycle to continue itself again. In the third movement, one can hardly resist the image of torrential rain and howling winds, particularly with the insistent and continuous descending scales in the basses, reminiscent of Vivaldi’s Summer in the same key.

Whilst Vivaldi is generally known today for his violin concertos, it is notable that he, together with Tomaso Albinoni and Alessandro Marcello, wrote one of the first concertos for the oboe. Composed in the 1720s very shortly after the Albinoni and Marcello concertos, the Oboe Concerto in A minor, RV 461 is one of around 20 concertos Vivaldi wrote for the oboe. The outer movements of the concerto feature orchestra ritornelli that are driving, slightly dark and intensely rhythmic, interspersed with oboe solo passages that range from light virtuosity to impassioned outcries. The middle movement provides a stark contrast in mood, creating a more contemplative, pastoral atmosphere in C major. Here, the oboe takes on an operatic role, singing long, expressive phrases that soar above a gentle, pulsating accompaniment in the strings.

For six years (1717-1723), Johann Sebastian Bach led one of the two finest orchestras of Germany. As music director at the palace of Köthen, he presided over a small but excellent orchestra of musicians who had formerly worked at the palace of Berlin. The prince of Köthen had successfully recruited these musicians from Berlin. The Berlin-Köthen musicians inspired in Bach an outpouring of virtuoso compositions for small orchestra. These pieces have become amongst the most beloved orchestral works in the world – the Brandenburg Concertos, the orchestral suites, and the violin concertos.

The works that we call the Orchestral Suites were labeled by Bach as “Ouvertures.” All of them are French-inspired suites consisting of a virtuosic overture in French style, followed by a series of dance movements. The great Ouverture no. 2 is essentially a flute concerto, and was clearly intended for a quite small ensemble so that the gentle baroque flute (or traverso) could be heard clearly.

The opening Overture follows the classic French style, featuring a grand opening and closing section of dotted rhythms, sandwiching a fast, fugal middle section. The flute often doubles the first violins but breaks away for virtuosic episodes. The Rondeau is a graceful dance characterized by a recurring theme interspersed with contrasting episodes, providing a sense of balanced, courtly symmetry. The Sarabande is a slow, stately dance in triple meter. Bach employs a canon here — the bass line follows the melody exactly but at a different interval, creating a dense, emotive texture.

The pair of Bourrées are lighthearted, earthy dances, featuring the flute in a playful display of virtuosity in the second Bourrée. The Polonaise pays homage to the Polish folk dance, followed by its Double – its variation whereby the continuo section maintains the Polonaise theme while the flute performs a dazzling, continuous stream of sixteenth notes above them. The penultimate Menuet is elegant and understated, serving as a momentary breath of air before the high-energy finale. The closing Badinerie gets its name from the French word badiner (to jest or trifle). This is the suite’s most famous movement—a lightning-fast display of flute virtuosity that has made its way to become a staple of popular culture.

Our second half opens with the first of two “concertos for multiple instruments” – a type of concerto that features multiple soloists instead of just one. In doing so, composers not only have more instrumental colors to play with; they also gain more dramatic possibilities in their compositions by having the multiple soloists engage in conversation, sing a love duet, or spar against each other in a fiery showdown.

Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco’s Op. 5 Concerto à piu istrumenti is collection of six innovative concertos, showcasing Dall’Abaco’s unique style of blending Italian fire with French elegance in Northern Europe. Dall’Abaco’s blend of styles came about when he followed his employer Maximilian II Emmanuel on exile from Bavaria to Brussels and France, following the Elector’s defeat at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. During his decade in Northern Europe, Dall’Abaco absorbed the French style — notably the use of wind instruments and formal dance structures — and merged it with the virtuosic string writing of his Italian roots. The Concerto Op. 5, No. 3 in E minor is a product of this “international” style, published shortly after the court’s return to Munich. Originally scored for two solo flutes, tonight’s performance adapts the 2nd flute part for oboe, which was another instrument Dall’Abaco featured in his other works.

The French Baroque composer Marin Marais was a central figure at the court of Louis XIV. His Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris (The Bells of St. Genevieve) is named after the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris (the site where the Panthéon now stands). Marais captures the acoustic experience of standing near the abbey as its bells rang out across the city, creating a dense, overlapping web of sound. The entire composition is built upon a three-note basso ostinato (a repeating ground bass): D-F-E, evoking the carillon that never ceases. While the bass remains constant, Marais weaves an increasingly complex and virtuosic series of variations above it, and occasionally heightens the drama through subtle harmonic shifts.

We close our program with Vivaldi’s Concerto in F major, RV 572, another example of a “concerto for multiple instruments.” This is an arrangement of an earlier oncerto for just violin and cello, RV 544, with the same subtitle of “Il Proteo o sia il mondo al rovescio” (Proteus, or the World Turned Upside-Down). The latter phrase is a popular Baroque trope often associated with Carnival, where social and natural orders are inverted. In its original form of RV 544, Vivaldi turns the world “upside down” by writing the violin part in the bass clef (as if it were a cello) and the cello part in the treble clef (as if it were a violin), letting them occupy tonal registers that subvert traditional expectations. The evocative drone of the viola throughout the first movement acts as the central axis in the middle of the score, becoming the horizontal axis of this mirror where the two soloists switch roles. The viola drone is also widely interpreted to represent the shape-shifting god Proteus, whose omnipresence is felt through his ability to take different forms.

Vivaldi later expanded RV 544 into a concerto that also included solos for flute, oboe and harpsichord. Recent research suggests that this expanded version (RV 572) may have been prepared for the orchestra of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome. Ottoboni’s ensemble was one of the few in Italy at the time that could boast the specific “extra” wind players and virtuoso harpsichordist required. Whilst the original “upside down” switching of the violin and cello ranges went away with this version, Vivaldi gained access to the tonal colors of more instruments as soloists pair up to engage in friendly conversation and dramatic sparring.

©2026 Alan Choo & Jeannette Sorrell
Singapore & Cleveland, OH