Listen carefully, as themes emerge in one voice, and then are taken up by another. As the vibrant drama unfolds, these spirited instrumental voices seem to be pulling us along on a thrilling adventure.

The first solo statement spins seamlessly out of the concluding cadence of the opening ritornello (a recurring tutti section). The first movement ( Vivace) springs to life with a vigorous fugue statement, heard first in the second violin, then in the first violin, and finally deep in the basso continuo. This high octane contrapuntal conversation is what we experience in Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor BWV 1043. While Vivaldi’s “Double” Concerto feels open and breezy, with sunny, virtuosic solo lines often soaring above a sonic expanse, Bach’s Concertos are filled with dense, exhilarating counterpoint and layers of intricate moving parts. Then, he proceeded to take Vivaldi’s model in a bold new direction. He transformed it into the Organ Concerto in A minor BWV 593. Bach was one composer who was profoundly influenced by the publication of the set. Around 1713 while employed at Weimar, Bach studied Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A minor RV 522.

It was a prime example of the Baroque concerto grosso form, in which a solo instrument, or small group of instruments, engage in continuous dialogue with a larger ensemble. The British musicologist Michael Talbot has called L’estro armonico “perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century.” In 1711, a collection of violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi was published in Amsterdam under the title, L’estro armonico (“The Harmonic Inspiration”).

Concerto for 2 violins vivaldi