Jubilation Vénitienne

Profession of faith Héloïse Gaillard – Venetian Jubilation

This project was born during the year 2019. I have wanted for a long time to build a concert program with the Maîtrise des Pays de la Loire which, just like my Amarillis Set, is a musical group from this region based in Angers. I never would have imagined that the pandemic due to the Covid virus 19 would permanently devastate our lives and disrupt all our plans.

I embarked on the development and realization of this project by asking the choir director Mariana Delgadillo to direct the mastery within the framework of this project, betting that this pandemic would not destroy our enthusiasm and our deep desire to perform this program which celebrates joy and jubilation with two composers as brilliantly creative as Antonio Caldara and Antonio Vivaldi.

These two extraordinary composers, with very different destinies, leave us a work whose scope remains immense even today. I wanted to bring these two Venetian masters who died in Vienna closer together not, of course, in a spirit of confrontation, but to promote dialogue between their two musical universes whose richness is inexhaustible.

The Gloria in D Major RV 589 by Vivaldi, major work of the red priest, song of praise to the Holy Trinity, is set against a motet honoring the Blessed Sacrament by Antonio Caldara.

This program also gives pride of place to virtuosity with some famous concertos, like the famous flautino concerto RV 443 by Antonio Vivaldi. I chose to introduce into the Gloria two movements from the RV concerto 537, originally for two trumpets, performed in the instrumentation of a trumpet and an oboe as was frequently practiced at the time in order to resonate with the opening Gloria and the two final pieces of the Gloria RV 589 that Vivaldi colored with the addition of these two wind instruments.

This program pays homage to the young girls of the Pietà, raised in the vocal art

 and instrumental from the age of eight and taken to peaks of musicality and virtuosity until adulthood. Vivaldi composed most of his concertos and sacred works for them.

It is likely that Vivaldi composed this Gloria on the occasion of his taking office as Maestro di coro at the Ospedale della Piétà with a choir composed of young girls in 1713.

It seemed to me all the more relevant to be able to interpret it with the voices of the Masters composed mainly of young girls.. The vocal group of this recording is made up of thirteen young girls and seven boys., and it includes fifteen middle school students and five high school girls.

   The two Antonio Caldara instrumental Sinfonie chosen for this program are very different in style from each other and reveal the composer's melodic and rhythmic inventiveness, just like the famous chaconne of opus 2.

To re-create in all the diversity of its colors a concert in this baroque Venice, children's voices combine or alternate with the flautino's singing, oboe, trumpet and strings, so that this program is an explosion of joy and jubilation !

This recording is the reflection of this somewhat crazy adventure, with multiple and sometimes desperate constraints, that we experienced as an act of resistance to the health crisis that we had to live through while the live performance had not yet been able to regain its rights !

Heloïse Gaillard