Vivaldi, Pisendel, Respighi, Malipiero, et Moi

The Vivaldi D major Sonata, now known as RV 10, is a much-loved recital piece that became popular in the twentieth century.



We don't have a Vivaldi manuscript, but we do have a copy made by Johann Georg Pisendel. Pisendel (1687-1755) was a great violin virtuoso and a good friend of Johnann Sebastian Bach. We can imagine Pisendel's copy to be (mostly) accurate since he was good friends with Vivaldi as well. He was also friends with Telemann, who was clearly inspired by the spirit and substance of this Vivaldi Sonata while writing his solo violin fantasias. I noticed this yesterday when I played through all twelve.

You can read about the Pisendel/Telemann friendship in this very good article in Classical Net, and you can see Pisendel's work as a composer, a copyist (work he copied for his personal and professional use, no doubt), an arranger, and an editor on this page of the IMSLP.

This is from the cover of Pisendel's copy of the Vivaldi:



This is the first page:



And here is a later page, one of three that are nearly impossible to read:



Ottorino Respighi made an edition of it in 1910, and Gian Francesco Malipiero edited a 1962 Ricordi publication of it, which you can see in the above video.

There are a few mistakes in the Respighi-Malipiero edition, particularly in the slow movement. I was able to correct these in my transcription by referring to the Pisendel copy (a big thanks to the IMSLP for all of this). Some of the last movement is unreadable in the Pisendel copy, so Respighi had to make some educated choices. He also added some original material to the end, which adds considerable excitement (I wonder if Malipiero knew).

Here's the first page of the product of my labors:



And the last page, with Respighi's ending:



You can find the score and parts on this page of the IMSLP.