"The Christmas Concerto"

There are only 6 days left until Christmas!

Blue Cross of Idaho is known for its quality health care, but it turns out that the folks there also throw one heck of a company Christmas party!  Prism got to greet guests with holiday music as they entered their Blue Cross Black and White Ball.  We played in the foyer at the Grove Hotel in downtown Boise while guests entered and mingled before their main event on Friday, December 13th.  The party planners asked for a mixture of classical and Christmas music, so we put together a playlist of festive tunes, old carols, and baroque pieces.  In addition to "Joy to the World," "Carol of the Bells," "White Christmas," "Silent Night" and many others, we added pieces like Andrew Lloyd Weber's version of "Pie Jesu" (a wedding favorite), two crisp movements of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," Diane's arrangement of "The Prayer," and a piece called "The Christmas Concerto." 

This concerto is one of our favorite hybrid tunes.  It was written by Arcangelo Corelli in approximately 1690, though it wasn't published until after Corelli's death almost 25 years later.  Technically, it is just called "Concerto Grosso in g minor," but it was probably meant to be a Christmas composition because of an inscription on the piece that reads "Fatto per la note di Natale," which means "Made for the night of Christmas."  It takes us about 15 minutes to play and has 6 short movements which can be played individually or together.  Each movement has its own unique tempo (speed) and mood, so we skipped the slowest of the 6 to keep the atmosphere light.   Corelli also used a technique common to the baroque period called terraced dynamics.  This means that his music jumped back and forth from loud to soft frequently in his music, which gave this concerto an air of dramatic fun.

Prism likes to think that it gives Corelli's ghost a smile to hear his piece played amidst glittering Christmas trees and smiling guests at a holiday party.