Last Saturday night I attended the debut concert of an orchestra composed of students and maestros from the Santa Celia conservatory in Rome. The conductor was Letizia Vennarini. The music itself consisted of interpretations of ‘the most beautiful baroque repertoire’ to quote the information available via the orchestra’s social media account on Facebook.
The orchestra was recently created with a clear purpose and that was to provide talented youth with the opportunity to perform timeless compositions alongside experienced musicians in magnificent venues in Rome and Italy.
Here’s the leaflet from the event:
This was my first chamber music concert, (small as opposed to large-scale orchestras) which historically performed music of the Baroque era. The concert performed three concertos by the Classical era composer J.S Bach. Further details are listed in the programme details below:
I wasn’t au fait with the other concertos but the first orchestral suite no. 3 in D Major, BMV 1068 ‘On the G string’ is world famous! I’ll share a video of it later in this post!
The venue for the event was Basilica di Sant’Andrea delle Valle located on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, which lies more or less opposite Piazza Navona. I’ve attached a few photos of the venue in this post. It’s even better in the flesh and so my photos fail to do this beautiful basilica the credit that it’s most certainly due!
I arrived at the venue during the evening mass, which took place an hour before the arrival of the concert. As per my last concert attendance, I was early but this time by 30 minutes as opposed to an hour! To be honest, I enjoyed the tranquility of the service and it was a lovely prelude to the start of the concert. Listening to the service had a settling effect on me and made me feel more of a ready listener for the ensuing concert.
Once mass was over, the group of concert attendees, (who had been waiting patiently near the entrance to the basilica) swiftly took their seats. A short while later, the performers began setting up and there was an introductory talk that thanked us for attending and discussed the programme in greater detail, whilst also advising the audience, both in Italian and in English to kindly refrain from clapping in the interim between each movement of the concertos but to wait until the end of each before doing so.
As this was a free concert, envelopes were also handed out to the audience for those who would like to contribute a donation if they so wished.
The acoustics of the church magnified the sound of each concerto beautifully. Here are recordings of the concertos in the order that they were performed but alas, not from the event itself. The first and most universally well-known, is Bach’s Suite No.3 in D Major BMV 1068:
The next concerto was the Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor, BMV 1041. This is the first movement in Allegro Moderato:
After that there was the concerto for violin in E major BMV 1042 and the following video is of the full concerto:
Lastly, there was the final concerto BMV 1043 for 2 violins:
It was a wonderful debut for the orchestra and I’m going to keep an eye on any concerts that they will hold in the future. My final photograph is from the end of the concert and you can see at the front centre, the conductor Letizia Vennarini and to her left, Maestro Antonio D’Andrea.
I’m fortunate to live in a city like Rome, where not only do I get the opportunity to experience the performance of talented students from the conservatory but also in a beautiful venue such as this. It really added to the elegance of the entire evening.
The encore performance was the lovely Suite No.3 in D Major, BMV 1068 and as they say in Rome, it was the ‘cilegina sulla torta’ or the cherry on the cake!
CLASSICALISTA 