Twelfth Night
All’Italiana

The unparalleled wellspring of inspiration throughout Baroque Europe was undoubtedly Italy. Desperate to breathe the same air, taste the same food, and hear the same music, composers such as George Frideric Handel rushed to Rome, Venice, Florence, and Naples early in their careers. Those without the means, or whose employers would not allow the time off, absorbed what they could by poring over score after Italian score, as did Johann Friedrich Fasch. Others, like Georg Philipp Telemann, were content to let their imaginations run wild, fusing fashionable Italian music with the rigor of German technique. Throughout this afternoon’s program, All’Italiana, these three Teutonic figureheads collide with trailblazing icons from the North and South of Italy, respectively Venice’s Antonio Vivaldi and Naples’ Francesco Durante.

Vivaldi naturally takes top billing on any program highlighting Italian influence. The overture to his 1724 opera Il Giustino shows his keen sense of dramatic timing, opening with sharp stops and starts that jolt the audience to attention. A bittersweet middle movement, with its aching violin line, offers a brief moment of repose before giving way to a rustic, almost martial finale.

Known for pursuing a “mixed taste” throughout his life’s work, Telemann strove for a cosmopolitan style that could appeal to French, Italian, and German musicians alike. Yet his A minor sonata in four parts shows no such pretensions; it is unabashedly Italian. Contemporary manuscripts and catalogues even reveal his youthful infatuation with Italy by way of his playful anagrammatic pseudonym, Georgio Melante. The sonata opens with a haunting, disjunct refrain that passes restlessly from one instrument to another, followed by a gigue-like movement (ironically, a dance Italians had borrowed from the English), which is suddenly cut short by more unsettled, haunting music. The mood is appropriately set for Handel’s unforgettable aria of profound melancholy, “Se vago rio,” composed during the composer’s Roman visit in 1708. Here the accompaniment undulates in a Sicilian rhythm, at once a backdrop for the voice and reflection of the protagonist’s subconscious. The sonata recommences with brusque, declamatory chords followed by a tumbling, restless finale.

Unable to find his way to Italy, Fasch was forced to admire from afar. His D minor sonata is even more à la mode than Telemann’s, balancing learned imitation with sumptuous textures. The opening movement is dark and lyrical, followed by a second that shifts between lively instrumental conversation and what sound like playful shouting matches. The third turns to France with the sumptuous ouverture-like rhythm, before morphing into a miniature violin concerto. The finale unleashes a whirlwind of counterpoint, this time purely for raucous, theatrical effect.

Plucked from his seemingly bottomless output, Vivaldi’s E minor concerto for violin showcases traits of the Italian style that became notorious abroad, namely, startling harmonies and a penchant for surprise and effect above all else. The first movement is a case study in Italian audacity, veering abruptly across the emotional spectrum. The second is a master class in sustained tension, built on little more than a throbbing accompaniment and a desperate violin line. By the third movement, the chromatic turbulence of the earlier music breaks loose, underpinned by a rumble that can only be described as a seismic event.

The centerpiece of the program is Handel’s cantata Armida abbandonata, written during his formative years in Italy. The work draws on the legend of Armida, the sorceress from Torquato Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata, who falls in love with the crusader Rinaldo only to be abandoned by him. Handel seizes on her moment of betrayal, giving voice to her anguish in a single-voiced cantata of striking intensity. Written in Rome at a time when opera was routinely suppressed, the cantata offered Handel an outlet to experiment with operatic drama in miniature. Its virtuosic demands and searing emotional range foreshadow the great operatic heroines of his later career.

The true beating heart of Italy was, of course, Naples, the largest European city along the Mediterranean at the time. Here, Durante reigned supreme as a composer of both instrumental and sacred music, as well as a pedagogue who trained countless 18th-century superstars. His G minor concerto opens with a movement marked “affectionately,” immediately revealing the operatic vocality that pervades his slow music, despite his lack of interest in staged works. The second movement begins without pause or preparation—a brilliant use of elision that showcases Durante’s dramatic flair—careening and whipping all instruments into a frenzy. This energy paves the way for Handel’s showstopping “E un foco quel d’amore,” drawn from his Venetian triumph Agrippina. A gentle return to Durante anticipates Mozart and the elegance of the Classical era, again marked “affectionately.”

The program closes with Handel’s “Al dispetto di sorte crudele,” a playfully defiant and joyful outpouring of vocal and instrumental virtuosity.
—David Belkovski