Concerto for Two Mandolins in G

Two of Vivaldi's concertos put the mandolin out front: RV 425 for one mandolin, and this one for two, with strings and continuo. It is in G major, in three movements, an Allegro, an Andante in E minor and another Allegro. Nobody has pinned down the year. IMSLP dates it no later than 1740, and his own manuscript is in Turin, in the Giordano collection that came to light with the rest of his scores in the 1920s.

He wrote it for the gut-strung mandolino of his day, a smaller instrument than the one in most hands now, and it has become a standard for the modern mandolin all the same. Two players and a string section is a lineup any mandolin orchestra can field, which goes a long way toward explaining why this concerto is played so often.

The first movement opens with the whole band. In the ritornello the first mandolin plays the same notes as the first violins, and then the strings drop back and the soloists are on their own. The page follows the first mandolin up to its first bars alone, and stops on the g where it falls silent and leaves the next phrase to the second mandolin. Play it with a friend on the second part and the concerto starts to make sense.

On a mandolin this is a workout in the first bar. The opening climbs g, a, b, a on the E course to the seventh fret and drops straight back to the B on the A course, and the middle of the ritornello is a long run of sixteenths that keeps coming back to the d on the A course, g, d, e, f sharp and g, d, B, d over and over, with the pick crossing between two courses on nearly every note. The page looks like eighth notes because every value is doubled. The beat runs at half the number on the chip, and the notes are the concerto's sixteenths.