Cello Concerto, RV 399

Vivaldi left twenty-seven concertos for solo cello, more than any composer before him, and almost all of them survive only in the manuscripts gathered at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin. RV 399 in C major belongs to that group; none of these works was printed in his lifetime, and no first performance is documented. They were written for the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, where Vivaldi taught, and where the players were the institution's girls and young women. Three movements, fast, slow, fast, with the cello treated as a singing rather than a bass instrument.