5/2/2023 0 Comments Lilypond choralEven though I finished school a number of years ago, the one-and-done degree recital mentality is something I’m still trying to shake. The ability to actually take chances and try new things over the course of multiple performances can shape your perception of and relationship to a piece in ways that are difficult - if not impossible - to recreate in the practice room or in a stand-alone performance. This is the first time I’ve performed a single solo work so often, and I’ve found it to be an incredibly instructive and freeing experience. Our tenth performance will come this Sunday, as part of the Bravo Bach Festival in Sacramento. I first performed the piece with Camerata Capistrano in February of this year, and luckily we’ve had many chances to present it again since then. The third movement is just all-out intensity - it starts with the whole ensemble in driving unison (almost the Baroque equivalent of power chords), and contains what I think is one of the best licks ever written for bassoon (mm. The second movement foregos the upper strings entirely, creating a beautiful and passionate dialog between soloist and continuo. There are many things I love about this concerto. It’s probably not surprising that I chose one of the concerti from Nadina’s disc (RV 495), with which I’d been singing along for weeks. Happily for me, she agreed, and I set about picking a piece. So much so, in fact, that I asked Lorna Peters, Sacramento State’s wonderful harpsichord (and piano) teacher, if she’d consider programming one of them with Camerata Capistrano, the school’s Baroque ensemble. But aside from the various print materials, I had a more-or-less constant Vivaldi bassoon concerto soundtrack - mostly pre-release mixes of Nadina’s recording, but also versions by Michael McCraw, Sergio Azzolini, Maurice Allard, and others.īy the time I had finished the notes for Nadina, I was thoroughly fired-up about Vivaldi and his 37 bassoon concerti (plus two incomplete works). If I could just keep finding and absorbing more sources without ever having to actually write anything, I’d be that much happier. As far as I’m concerned, research is the fun part. I dove into the project with my customary gusto - books littered my desk and floor, and PDFs of miscellaneous Vivaldiana delivered to me by the wizards of Interlibrary Loan similarly cluttered my laptop screen. But my relationship with this piece began last year, after Nadina Mackie Jackson did me the honor of asking me to write the liner notes for the first disc in what will eventually be a set of all the Vivaldi bassoon concerti. I’ve played a couple of Vivaldi’s other concerti in the past. I hope that this will all prove useful to someone out there, particularly since this is one of the required pieces for the 2014 Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition. But first I’d like to talk a bit about my path to the piece and my methods in creating this edition. You can download the whole thing (for free!) at the end of this post. I’m very excited today to release something to the world on which I’ve spent a great deal of time: a new performing edition of Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor for bassoon, strings, and basso continuo (RV 495), prepared using a copy of Vivaldi’s own manuscript. That way I can just post future updates there without having to make a new post every time. The charts now reside on their own separate page under my Resources tab. The Extreme Range Chart just shows the very top end of my fingerings, for those who don’t need any help in the standard range.The Pro Chart goes all the way up to Bb 5 for the adventurous.The Student Chart extends up to E 5, uses tenor clef, and shows flicking keys in red.The Beginner Chart includes fingerings for the first three octaves of the bassoon (Bb 1-Bb 4), uses only bass clef, and shows venting rather than flicking.There are now four separate versions of my fingering chart, suitable for different uses: I may at some point add charts for alternate fingerings and/or trills, but they aren’t there yet. ![]() ![]() The charts show my basic fingering(s) for each note. Now, finally, I’ve rebuilt the things from the ground up and made some alterations that were long overdue. But I lost my source files shortly after publishing the first charts, and have only been able to make very minor changes since then. It was always my intention to tweak the charts as I used them for teaching and received feedback from other users. That post is far and away the most popular on this site, and I’ve heard reports from all over of people using the charts. I first published my own bassoon fingering charts a little over two years ago.
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