Vivaldi: Beatus vir RV795

The motets presented here are laid out as for a vesper service: the invitatory followed by five psalms with antiphon, and finally the Magnificat. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon has opted for the antiphons for the feast of St Mark, patron saint of Venice. The liturgy can only be genuinely experienced in situ, in the nave of an illuminated church decked out in its finest ornaments for a solemn occasion. This recording is, rather than a reconstruction, an evocation of the Office of Vespers, whose principal framework is the appropriate music composed by Vivaldi.

Leonardo García Alarcón has been artistic director of the Choeur de Chambre de Namur since January 2010. In the same year he began a three-year residency at the Centre Culturel de Rencontre d’Ambronay. For Ambronay Éditions, he has already recorded programmes of music by Peter Philips and Barbara Strozzi, Handel’s Judas Maccabæus with the Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Purcell’s Dido and Æneas.

“For several years now, I have tried to imagine Vivaldi the priest in the context of a vesper service. This imaginative exercise enables me to set in sharper relief Vivaldi the man of the Church, whereas it is the operatic composer who is so much in vogue these days, and it helps me get closer to a ‘spiritual’ Vivaldi, more in phase with his ecclesiastical office. We possess few clues and virtually no historical documents to identify the occasions for which Vivaldi set these psalms to music. The Choeur de Chambre de Namur, Les Agrémens and I have taken the liberty of imagining a set of Vespers such as the prete rosso might have assembled at some point in his life. In an age when Vivaldi seems to live only in the opera house, here is a selection of pieces devoted to the Divine Office and more specifi cally to the feast of St Mark, the patron saint of Venice.” Leonardo García Alarcón