Sacred music by Antonio Vivaldi

Latinitas Nostra, an ensemble specializing in baroque music, was founded by the harpsichordist, Markellos Chrysikopoulos. His aim: to perform baroque works, many of them unpublished, on period instruments in line with authentic performance practice. The ensemble also sought to spotlight the cultural links between Greece and the West alluded to in its name –Latinitas Nostra, meaning “our (Greek) West”– and the revival of works with Greek subject-matter remains central to their choices. Examples include the performance of Antonio Caldara’s “L’Olimpiade” on the basis of unpublished archive material.

The ensemble will be performing with the Italian mezzo, Romina Basso, a singer endowed with an unusually wide vocal range which she employs in a repertoire that encompasses both Baroque and Romantic works. Like the ensemble’s conductor, Romina Basso adopts a creative approach to Baroque performance: improvisation—often extremely virtuosic—is integral to her style, as it was to singers and musicians of the period.

The core of the program consists of religious works for Easter by Antonio Vivaldi, principally the "Stabat Mater dolorosa" for solo alto and strings which he wrote in 1712 after a long period devoted exclusively to the composition of instrumental works. The work is a musical setting for a Medieval poem meditating on the suffering of the Virgin Mother during Christ’s crucifixion. Vivaldi’s version differs from those of other composers in setting just ten of its twenty verses to music, enabling the work to be played at Vespers on the Friday before Palm Sunday.