La Dolce Vita - Italian Baroque & Beyond - The Steiner Academy

Corelli’s elegant and imaginative mastery of the Concerto Grosso form is presented alongside works by contemporaries Marcello, Tartini and Vivaldi. The timeless sublimity of the Adagio from Marcello’s Oboe Concerto is contrasted by the infernal fiddling of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata which was conceived following a dream in which the eponymous antihero appeared to the composer and played so astoundingly that he was compelled to set it down.

The darbuka-driven street tunes such as La Rotta, Istanpitta Ghaetta and Saltarello hint at the myriad influences on Italian music from North Africa, the Middle East and even from the further reaches of the network of trade routes connecting the East and West, commonly referred to as the ‘Silk Road’.