In Principio

“This isn't the 'Vivaldi Vespers', or even a reconstruction of a specific event, but a kind of 'sacred concert' in Vespers form, of the sort that Venetian churches in Vivaldi's time would mount in the name of worship.
Whether he ever supplied all the music for any such occasion isn't clear, but he certainly set plenty of Vespers texts, enough at any rate for Rinaldo Alessandrini and scholar Frédéric Delaméa to put together this rich programme…” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (4 January 1710 – 16 or 17 March 1736) was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.
Born at Jesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others. He spent most of his brief life working for aristocratic patrons like the Colonna principe di Stigliano, and duca Marzio IV Maddaloni Carafa.

Although Bach and Monteverdi were the two main composers Michel Corboz recorded, he focused intensely on Vivaldi’s sacred music during the mid-70s, be it with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Lausanne ensembles or the English Bach Festival Baroque Orchestra. This collection includes the digital premiere of his recording of Beatus vir, RV 598, newly remastered!

This boxed set of four CDs brings together the sublime Glorias, extracts from the opera L'Olimpiade and the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, as well as his lively concertos for cords, all recordings hailed by the international press! With the Concerto Italiano, conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.

Vivaldi was following in the footsteps of Monteverdi when he wrote the motets, Psalm settings, choruses and other solo and ensemble liturgical pieces which are traditionally grouped together into one of the most striking and musically varied musical Offices - that of Vespers. We can assume Vivaldi intended his works in the genre for performance as acts of worship at San Marco since he was not maestro di cappella at the Pietà, the charitable refuge for girls of the city in which he worked for so long. Though we do not know for which occasion or occasions. But you should make no mistake: this recording - for all its merits - is first and foremost an otherwise un-gathered collection.
Mark Sealey

On April 9, 1786, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach conducted a charity concert in Hamburg featuring three of his finest and most representative works: the Symphony Wq 183/1, the Magnificat (written in 1749 in the hope of succeeding his father as Cantor in Leipzig) and his stupendous 'Heilig' for double choir, of which he wrote, "It will be my swan song of this kind, and will serve to ensure that I shall not soon be forgotten after my death."