Antonio Vivaldi
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Vivaldi – Summer 'Storm'/ The Four SeasonsA. Vivaldi – Violin Concerto in G minor, RV. 2 “L’Estate (Summer)” III. Presto (Arranged for Piano S.
Four Seasons for cello and orchestra: Summer Play
Krystof Lecian | Cello |
Bohemian String Orchestra | Orchestra |
Recorded on 10/01/2010, uploaded on 10/01/2010
Musician's or Publisher's Notes
World première
The four concertos known as The Four Seasons are Antonio Vivaldi’s best-known works. Composed in 1723 and published two years later in Amsterdam, they are actually part of Vivaldi’s larger opus 8, entitled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), a set of twelve concerti for solo violin, string orchestra and continuo. A unique aspect of The Four Seasons is the sonnets Vivaldi supplied as an aid to the scenes depicted in the works. The author of the sonnets is unknown and it is possible that Vivaldi himself may have written them. Each divides neatly into three sections, correspondingly exactly to the three movements of each concerto.
Generally, when one thinks of a picturesque summer it is of green fields and lazy days beneath the shade of a tree. With this is mind, the G minor tonality of Vivaldi’s portrayal of the season in the second concerto of The Four Seasons may seem at first out of place. Thankfully, the accompanying sonnet provides us the visual imagery to associate with Vivaldi’s musical intentions. The portion of the sonnet depicted by the first movement describes summer as “the harsh season scorched by the sun,” and the music opens with only the fragments of melody that can’t seem to get started. The pace quickens and the middle portion of the movement is dominated by the imitation of bird calls. Towards the end, the rumblings of an approaching thunderstorm are heard.
The second movement depicts the shepherd unable to rest for fear of the approaching storm and pestering swarms of flies and hornets. Marked Adagio, the movement’s principal melody is tense, adequately representing the shepherd’s restlessness, and is punctuated by measures in a Presto tempo—the continual rumblings of the storm. The Presto tempo is maintained for the finale; the storm has arrived. Unmelodic, the movement abounds in rapid figurations for both soloist and ensemble, driving the music on with the fury of a tempest. Joseph DuBose
More music by Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto in F minor Op.8-4 RV 297
Trio Sonata in d minor 'La follia' Op. 1 No. 12
Concerto for 4 violins, cello, strings & continuo in B minor, 'L'estro armonico' op. 3, no. 10, RV 580
Four seasons for cello and orchestra Summer
Four Seasons for cello and orchestra: Spring
Four seasons for cello and orchestra: Winter
Four Seasons for cello and orchestra: Autumn
Four seasons for cello and orchestra Winter
Performances by same musician(s)
Play The Four Seasons By Vivaldi Songs
Sonata for cello and piano in g minor, Op 5, No. 2
Fulcanelli: Sinfonia concertante for cello and symphony orchestra Epiloque
Sonata for cello and piano in F Major, Op 5, No. 1
Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major, Op. 69
Sonata in C Major, Op. 102, No. 1 for Piano and Cello
Vivaldi Four Seasons Free
Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (transcribed for cello)
Czardas for cello and piano, world première
Sonata in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2 for Piano and Cello
At-A-Glance
About this Piece
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
In Spring’s first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent “the murmuring branches and leaves” and the viola’s repeated notes represent his “faithful dog” (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word “grida” written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the “merciless summer sun” and “man and flock” sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it’s the soloist’s task to make the cuckoo’s notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying “sweet sleep” in the “mild and pleasant” air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die.
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and “running and stamping your feet every moment” to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire “while the rain drenches everyone outside,” the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin’s melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of “Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.”
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that “Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,” were “Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.” Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.
By 1725, when Vivaldi published his Opus 8, a set of 12 concertos entitled The Contest between Harmony and Invention, he may well have been the most famous musician in Europe, and the first four concertos of the set, named Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, were already well known from circulating manuscript copies.
Part of their appeal would doubtless have been their extra-musical content. Vivaldi was hardly the first composer to depict nature and human activities in instrumental music, but no one had conjured the physical world quite so vividly and concisely with violins before. He wrote a sonnet for each concerto explaining what was going on, intended not only as description, but as instruction for performance: the sonnet verses are printed not only as prefaces to each concerto, but also in all the instrumental parts, in the midst of tempo markings and performance directions.
In Spring’s first movement, we hear the arrival of Spring, the birds greeting it (first solo), brooks and breezes, and a quick thunderstorm. In the slow movement, a goatherd sleeps under a tree while the second violins represent “the murmuring branches and leaves” and the viola’s repeated notes represent his “faithful dog” (whining or barking, depending on how violists understand the word “grida” written in their part). The finale is a big dance accompanied by bagpipes, which are represented by droning basses.
In Summer, the opening bars present the “merciless summer sun” and “man and flock” sweltering under it. In the first solo, the violin is an ornamented cuckoo — it’s the soloist’s task to make the cuckoo’s notes distinct in a barrage of 16th-notes. The second solo depicts the turtledove and goldfinch, and rustling of the gentle Zephyr breeze, which is joined by the violent north wind. The wind subsides long enough to let us hear how it makes a shepherd fear a coming storm, his agitated state depicted in a sequence of chromatically descending diminished chords — dissonances that lead to other dissonances instead of resolving. Vivaldi was capable of great harmonic (and contrapuntal) sophistication when it suited his purpose, and there are passages in the Four Seasons that could easily be mistaken for something written a century after his death. The second movement depicts the gentle, buzzing insects, and the shepherd listening with apprehension to distant thunder. In the third movement we get thunder, lightning, and hail.
Autumn begins with a celebration of the harvest in a vigorous dance that loses its energy as the peasants get drunk and fall asleep. In the slow movement the sonnet speaks of revelers enjoying “sweet sleep” in the “mild and pleasant” air, but the music is mysterious and dreamlike: virtually the entire movement is another sequence of unresolved dissonances. The physical world, and the aristocracy, barge in with the horn calls of a hunt in the third movement. We hear the prey flee from gunshots and barking hounds, and finally tire and die.
Vivaldi Four Seasons Full
Winter depicts shivering (yet another remarkable chain of dissonances), chattering teeth, and “running and stamping your feet every moment” to keep warm in snow and biting wind. Venice, at about the same latitude as Portland or Minneapolis, can get serious winter weather. The slow movement is a cozy indoor scene by the fire “while the rain drenches everyone outside,” the raindrops in pizzicato under the solo violin’s melody. The finale begins by painting a picture of trying to walk on ice without slipping, not always successfully, and concludes with the onslaught of “Sirocco, Boreas and the other winds at war.”
For those with enough skill, the four concertos are great fun to play, which would have ensured popularity in the 18th century, when instrumental proficiency was common among people with money. Of course, not everyone liked them. Geminiani, the Corellian conservative, complained that “Imitating the Cock, Cuckoo, Owl and other birds, and also sudden Shifts of the Hand from one extremity of the Finger-board to the other,” were “Tricks that rather belong to the Professors of Legerdemain and Posture-makers than to the art of Musick.” Geminiani inveighing against Vivaldi sounds not unlike the 19th-century classicists inveighing against Wagner and Liszt, and just as ineffectively.