Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season November-December 2015

{ program notes Philharmonic under Marin Alsop’s baton at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Icarus instrumentation: Two flutes, two piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celesta, piano, and strings. Concerto for Four Violins and Cello in B Minor Concerto for Two Trumpets in C Major “Spring” and “Summer” from THE FOUR SEASONS Antonio Vivaldi Born in Venice, Italy, March 4, 1678; died in Vienna, Austria, July 21, 1741 So popular is Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons today that it seems incomprehensible these delightful concertos should have languished in the musical attic for more than 200 years before re-appearing around 1950, just in time for the invention of the long-playing record. For it was the LP that spread the Seasons’ fame throughout the world; today, with more than 200 renditions produced, it probably ranks as the most recorded classical work in history. How Vivaldi would have loved all those royalties! After a long and illustrious career in which he composed some 800 works — including 500 concertos for virtually every instrument extant in his time, as well as operas and church music — he died a pauper in 1741 in Vienna, far from his native Venice. But in his prime, he was a celebrated violin virtuoso, and his dynamic concertos influenced many other contemporary composers, including J. S. Bach. Ordained to the priesthood as a young man and known as the “Red Priest” for his flame-colored hair, Vivaldi rarely celebrated Mass. Instead, he presided for some three decades as music master at Venice’s L’Ospedale della Pietà, a charity school for orphaned girls, and made its concerts one of Venice’s leading cultural attractions. By the 1720s, Vivaldi was devoting some of his time to the service of Count Wenzeslaus von Morzin of Bohemia. 18 O v ertur e | WWW. BSOMUSIC .ORG In 1725, he dedicated a remarkable new publication of 12 concertos, entitled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione (“The Trial of Harmony and Invention”), to the Count— the first four of these concertos being The Four Seasons. Although he had written other concertos with colorful titles, the Seasons took descriptive writing several steps farther by graphically illustrating four sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself, which are included in the original printed edition. Moreover, Vivaldi added verbal cues in the scores so performers would know exactly what they were representing. At these concerts, we will hear the first two seasonal concertos. “Spring” (E major) is viewed as a benign season in which Mother Nature brings unclouded happiness to humankind. Its opening movement features enchanting birdsong for the soloist and two other solo violins. The slow movement describes a goatherd slumbering in the fields; the “woof-woof” of his watchful dog sounds in the violas. The final Allegro is a pastoral bagpipe dance with the lower strings providing the drone. In G minor, “Summer” is the most threatening of the seasons. Its imaginative opening is a portrait of summer’s breathless heat, with rumbles of a thunderstorm in the distance. The soloist imitates the rapid song of the cuckoo and later the turtledove and goldfinch. We hear the background buzz of insects in the slow movement as the peasant sleeps restlessly, fearing the coming storm that might damage his crops. In the last movement, the storm finally breaks with all the fury Vivaldi could muster from his small ensemble. CONCERTO FOR FOUR VIOLINS AND CELLO The publication in 1711 of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico (“The Harmonic Fancy”), a set of 12 brilliant concertos for various combinations of instruments, swiftly spread the composer’s fame beyond the borders of his home city, Venice, to most of Europe. Even far away in German Saxony, J. S. Bach was fascinated with this collection and later transcribed this concerto featuring four violins for four harpsichords so he and his sons could play it at their Leipzig coffee-house concerts. He was just one of many composers of the day who adopted Vivaldi’s formal techniques and daring expressive devices to enrich their own concerto writing. Rhythmic vivacity dominates this lively concerto, even in the “slow” movement, whose central section boasts a rather quick tempo, framed by slower music in the stately French-overture style. The solo parts are treated as four dueling violins, each frequently clinging to their own rhythmic pattern. V

Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season November-December 2015 | Page 20