RV 588 is Vivaldi’s ‘other’ Gloria, a composition having many parallels with Vivaldi’s better-known setting of the same text (RV 589). It dates similarly from the period 1713-1717, when the composer was acting choirmaster at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. It even borrows from the same work, a slightly earlier Gloria by the Venetian amateur composer Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, for its closing fugue.

However, the present Gloria, RV 588, departs from its more famous counterpart in ingeniously...