Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin . Jean-Guihen Queyras

With works close to his heart - the cello concertos of Antonio Vivaldi - the French cellist, Jean-Giuhen Queyras, continues the focus of his deSingel concerts of the past season into the autumn of 2011. He is accompanied by other regular and highly regarded guests of our Blue Hall, the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Musical fireworks guaranteed! Vivaldi composed twenty-seven concertos for cello, an instrument that he probably did not play himself, but with which, as a gamba player, he was sufficiently familiar. It is not known whether he wrote these concertos for the orphan girls of the Venetian Ospedale della Pietà or for the virtuoso of the time, Giuseppe Vandini, but one thing is certain: they were written for very talented cellists - and that at a time when the cello had not yet made a real breakthrough or achieved its definitive size, and the number of its strings had not yet been finally determined. Two sinfonias by Antonio Caldara round off this Venetian concert evening.