Six Flute Concertos, Op. 10, in Full Score: With Related Concertos for Other Wind Instruments (review)

The historical and musical importance of Antonio Vivaldi's six concertos for transverse flute, four-part strings, and continuo, which were published as opus 10 in Amsterdam by Michel-Charles Le Cène in 1729, is undeniable. Even if this fairly recent dating by Rudolf Rasch (" 'La famosa mano di Monsieur Roger': Antonio Vivaldi and his Dutch Publishers," Informazioni e studi vivaldiani 17 [1996]: 89-137) puts back by one year the date of ca. 1728 hitherto accepted by most Vivaldi scholars, including Eleanor Selfridge-Field in the edition under discussion, Vivaldi remains the first composer to have devoted a complete published opus to this genre, which, by the middle of the century, had entered into a golden age, with mass production on the part of such northern composers as Johann Adolph Hasse, Johan Joachim Agrell, Johann Adolph Scheibe, and (notoriously) Johann Joachim Quantz. Indeed, Vivaldi himself continued to cultivate the genre diligently: eight further flute concertos are extant in complete state and two more survive with missing movements, while catalogs of the period testify to the existence of numerous lost works.

To make up a volume of the required bulk, Selfridge-Field has added six works that are with one exception related in some way to compositions in opus 10. Concertos 1, 3, and 6 are followed by earlier, manuscript versions of the same works (respectively, RV 570, RV 90, and RV 101). The last two are chamber concertos, or concertos for a group of assorted solo instruments without orchestra; the first is a chamber concerto (identified in its original form as RV 98) that the composer has turned into a concerto for flute, oboe, violin, bassoon, and strings by reinforcing the oboe and violin with orchestral violins and doubling the bass part with violas playing an octave higher. Ironically, by opting for the orchestral (RV 570) rather than the chamber (RV 98) version of the prototype for Concerto 1, Selfridge-Field has missed an opportunity to bring out the latter for the first time in a modern edition.

Two of the three remaining complementary works are more problematic. Concerto 2 is followed not by its "chamber" forebear, RV 104, but by a bassoon concerto, RV 501, which, apart from sharing a programmatic title (La notte) and some structural and pictorial elements, is a completely different work. Concerto 4 has no known antecedents and therefore no obvious partner. Selfridge-Field cuts the Gordian knot by appending to the set a concerto in C major, RV 444, for sopranino recorder (flautino). This is an attractive work, but its choice is quite arbitrary. Lastly, Concerto 5 teams up with its predecessor, RV 442. Since the conspicuous differences between Concerto 5 and RV 442 are only two—the former replaces alto recorder with transverse flute and changes the key of the slow movement from F minor (excellent for the recorder, which is pitched in F, but unsuited to the flute, which is in D) to G minor—the outer movements of RV 442 require no separate notation. Oddly enough, it is not the recorder version but the flute version that stands in greater need of a modern edition. The old Ricordi collected edition of Vivaldi's instrumental works sponsored by the Istituto italiano Antonio Vivaldi (ed. Gian Francesco Malipiero et al. [Milan: 1947-72]), working its way through the mass of Vivaldi manuscripts in Turin, published RV 442 early on in 1949 as tomo 46 (ed. Angelo Ephrikian). When, many years later, the time came to issue opus 10 in 1968, Concertos 1-4 and Concerto 6 appeared in sequence as tomi 454-58 (ed. Malipiero); Concerto 5 was omitted on account of...