The 23 so-called chamber concertos of Antonio Vivaldi, though making up a very small portion of the composer's voluminous output, occupy a unique position within his oeuvre and eighteenth century music as a whole. Scored more or less after the manner of the instrumental sonata for a small ensemble of instruments with continuo, the works nonetheless aspire in their form to the status of a concerto, with three movements (instead of four) in a fast-slow-fast configuration. They likewise mimic, to various degrees, the solo/tutti or concertino/ripieno textural contrasts characteristic of Vivaldi's other concertos by alternating between full and partial instrumentation, thus initiating many of the subsequent century's important developments in chamber music. Within the general concerto parameters of this unique subgenre, Vivaldi takes considerable license and occasionally introduces startlingly unique ideas, as in the particularly unusual Chamber Concerto in G minor, RV 105. The work features an instrumentation common to the chamber concerto genre: recorder, oboe, violin, bassoon, and continuo. However, whereas in similar concertos Vivaldi highlights the treble instruments, relegating the bassoon to the bassline or supplemental accompaniment, the concerto RV 105 grants the bassoon an unusual amount of time in the spotlight. In fact, instead of opening the first movement with the standard tutti ritornello statement, the other instruments begin with simple downbeat chords while the bassoon launches headlong into a series of descending runs and rising arpeggios. This unexpected start gives the entire movement the feel of continuous episode, interspersed with fragments of a ritornello that was never actually heard at the beginning. In the meantime, the treble instruments all take their share of virtuosic passages before ceding once again to busy bassoon runs. The second movement is even more unusual. Though observing the common middle-movement binary structure (with each half repeated, likely with ornamentation the second time), it lasts only ten notated bars. Also unusual is its key of E flat major, as well as its intimate instrumentation for recorder and bassoon alone, without continuo. Here again, the bassoon figures prominently, underscoring the recorder's gracefully spare melody with elegant neighbor-note figurations. The final movement, also somewhat unusual, follows a binary rather than ritornello or variation form, and once again keeps the bassoonist busy with elaborate runs and connective passages, though here always underscoring the upper voices' motivic exchanges, chordal exclamations, and lush sequences that precede the final tutti statement.

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