Baroque sounds to ring in holiday season at Vivaldi by Candlelight

One might not think so, but Salt Lake City has a connection to early music. Not in the same way as early music meccas Boston and Seattle have, but there definitely is a link.

Back in the mid-20th century, a huge cache of Antonio Vivaldi's music was discovered in a monastery in Europe. Languishing in obscurity at the time, this treasure trove of long forgotten works proved to be a godsend in reviving interest in Vivaldi's music and putting him in his rightful place alongside his contemporaries J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel. In the 1940s, around the time these scores were unearthed, one of the major figures in resurrecting the Italian composer's music was Maurice Abravanel, the legendary music director of the Utah Symphony.

And what Abravanel helped start, the Vivaldi by Candlelight concerts, have been keeping Vivaldi's name in everyone's consciousness in Salt Lake City. Not as a continuation of what the late maestro had been involved in, since Abravanel was never connected to the annual concert, but as a way of promoting a worthy organization and helping it raise funds.

For the last 28 years, Vivaldi by Candlelight has benefited the Utah Council for Citizen Diplomacy, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting global understanding and respect between the people of Utah and other nations. And for the past seven years, Utah Symphony associate concertmaster Gerald Elias has been its music director.

"It's a great organization and I'm honored to help them," he told the Deseret News.

This year's Vivaldi by Candlelight concert takes place on Dec. 18 at First Presbyterian Church.

Elias likes his job because he believes more baroque music should be played. "There is so much great music from this period, there should be more performances of it.

"I see the Vivaldi by Candlelight concerts as filling an important niche. And the holiday season is an appropriate time for this music, because we somehow naturally associate baroque music and the holidays, maybe because of Handel's 'Messiah.'"

Programming a concert like this can be difficult because of the sheer amount of music Vivaldi and his contemporaries wrote. But the old joke about Vivaldi writing one concerto 500 times just doesn't hold true, Elias said. "Some are pretty straightforward, but many are creative and have a lot going for them. There is a lot of variety in his music and the possibilities are unlimited."