I first played the Vivaldi cello sonatas in the late 1950s when I was 11 or 12 years old. I remember the room in my childhood home where I first learned these pieces. I’m in my childhood bedroom where I practiced, looking out the window at the darkness on a winter late afternoon. My family […]

What does it mean to have a basso ostinato pattern of thirteen whole note measures? How are the measures grouped? Is there ambiguity that lends interest? How do the cellist and harpsichord gain so much pleasure, in fact, receive ineffably profound emotions in playing the same thirteen whole notes 26 times? (Once for the “theme” […]