Concierto Barroco for violin and orchestra (after Alejo Carpentier)

Arnaoudov composed Concierto Barroco in 2007 for solo violin and strings, taking its title and its premise from Alejo Carpentier's 1974 novella, in which a Mexican traveller falls in with Vivaldi, Handel and Scarlatti and the four improvise together in Venice. The score does not quote the baroque so much as circle it: figuration that behaves like an eighteenth-century sequence but declines to resolve where the ear expects, laid over slow-moving string harmony. It was recorded in 2011 by the violinist Mario Hossen. Carpentier's book treats anachronism as a way of hearing history, and the piece keeps that argument audible throughout.