ANTONIO - Venetian Baroque Music by Vivaldi, Lotti & Caldara

Three Antonios: the programme brings together works by three Venetian contemporaries - Antonio Lotti (1667-1740), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Antonio Caldara (1670-1736) - all of whom received their musical training under Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690) in Venice.

Lotti's sacred compositions for countertenor and strings were most likely written for one of the Venetian Ospedali (Ospedale dei Mendicanti or Ospedale degli Incurabili). From a similarly charitable musical context comes Vivaldi's psalm setting "Nisi Dominus" RV 608: this dramatically charged and virtuosic work was probably composed in his early years for the orphan girls of the Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi served as a priest and music teacher. Particularly striking is the setting of the Gloria, which forgoes jubilant exuberance and instead highlights an instrumental solo for the rarely heard viola d'amore. The vocal works are complemented by two Vivaldi concerti and orchestral introductions to Caldara's oratorios, whose melodic polyphony clearly reflects Legrenzi's Venetian influence.

The soloist is countertenor Alex Potter, described by the press as a "rising star in the world of countertenors". Potter has worked with conductors including Philippe Herreweghe, Jordi Savall, Thomas Hengelbrock and Frieder Bernius; his training took him from New College Oxford to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he studied early music with Gerd Türk.

The North German baroque ensemble la festa musicale, founded in 2014 and a guest at events including the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and the Händel-Festspiele in Halle and Göttingen, performs under the artistic direction of concertmaster Anne Marie Harer.