Vivaldi: Confitebor tibi, Domine RV596

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 We possess few clues and virtually no historical documents to identify the occasions for which Vivaldi set these psalms to music.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

One could be forgiven for being more surprised that sacred music does not account for a more substantial proportion of Vivaldi's life's work, especially in view of his having been ordained a priest. The music on this disc, however, presents the 'other' side of Vivaldi, which in recent years has been gaining increasing popularity thanks to the efforts of such singers as Andreas Scholl. Philips made a pioneering set of a range of Vivaldi's sacred music and from it is culled music on this disc – uplifting and energising.

For many years after his death, Vivaldi’s vast output of sacred music lay silent and forgotten until Alberto Gentili tracked down an incredible 27 volumes of manuscripts in the 1920s. These volumes contained motets, movements of Masses, the oratorio Juditha triumphans, psalm settings and Marian antiphons. These works ranged from short single-movement works to larger-scale compositions with twelve or more sections.

One of the most famous works unearthed by Gentili was the Gloria. Today, this work is as popular as The Four Seasons and is among Vivaldi’s best-known music. The Gloria, like much of the sacred music by Vivaldi, is easily accessible, like his famous concertos. The music has a very human spirituality – nothing mystic, just a desire to explain the text in a clear pictorial way.

Much of Vivaldi’s sacred music was written for the Ospedale della Pietà, a state-funded foundlings’ home for girls, where he became music director after his ordination in 1703. His writing focused almost entirely on instrumental music, especially concertos, when the choirmaster Francesco Gasparini went on leave and failed to return. Vivaldi was asked to help out, and the results can be heard on these seven CDs.

This set is a must-have for those who love Vivaldi’s music and wish to explore beyond the famous concertos.

New booklet note by Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot.