Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto in A Major for Violin, Violin "per eco in lontano", Strings and Continuo, RV 552, Herbert Höver, Walter Prystawski (violins), Lucerne Festival Strings Orchestra, Rudolf Baumgartner (conductor)
1. Allegro - 00:00
2. Larghetto - 06:28
3. Allegro - 10:14
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678, Sestiere di San Marco, Repùblica Vèneta, Italy - July 28, 1741, Kärntnertor, Vienna, Austria) was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher and cleric. He is recognized as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He is known mainly for composing many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as "The Four Seasons".
Vivaldi's career as a violinist and composer was almost inevitable. His father was Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, a founder of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, an early musician's collective, who's President was the Baroque operatic composer and tutor Giovanni Legrenzi. As a youth, touring and performing around Venice in accompaniment on the violin with his father, he is likely to have been influenced by Legrenzi who had become maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Basilica in 1681. A redhead like his father, Vivaldi took up the course of attaining a priesthood in 1693 and became ordained in 1703, referred to by those around him as "Il Pretto Rossi" because of his red hair. By late 1703 he was unable to maintain his practice in the priesthood due to ill health and sought employment as a tutor of music, retaining his reverential title. By 1704 he worked as maestro of violin in Venice at the orphanage of the Devout Hospital of Mercy, an institution known as Conservatorio dell'Ospedale della Pietà, providing shelter to orphaned and abandoned children. He became Musical Director of the Pietà's institute in 1716 and was contracted to provide two concerti a month for the orchestra. Papers from the Pietà's history show that Vivaldi produced 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733.
Vivaldi had moved in high circles at this point, writing a wedding cantata for Louis XV and "La Cetra", a dedication to Viennese Emperor Charles VI who knighted the composer and invited him to Vienna.
After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi was left stranded without royal support or full remuneration. His health quickly declined and his asthmatic history took its toll some nine months later. He died of 'internal infection' at his home in Vienna.
He was given a simple burial in the cemetery of Spitaller Gottesacker following a funeral at St. Stephen's Cathedral.
After almost two centuries of decline, Vivaldi's musical reputation underwent a revival in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research devoted to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered - in one case as recently as 2006. His music remains widely popular in the present day and is regularly played all over the world.