VIVALDI FOUR SEASONS
wobbling through the first movement of“ Autumn.”
Here are a few highlights to listen for in each concerto.
“ Spring”( E major) is viewed, along with“ Autumn,” 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. According to the accompanying sonnet, the slow movement describes a goatherd slumbering in the fields; listen for the“ woof-woof” of his watchful dog in the violas. The final Allegro is a pastoral bagpipe dance in a rustic meter with the lower strings providing the drone.
In G minor,“ Summer” is the most threatening of the seasons. Its imaginative opening movement 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.
The bountiful harvests of“ Autumn”( in the traditional hunting-horn key of F major) are celebrated by a sober peasantdance ritornello in the first movement. But the soloist has drunk far too much, and his inebriated antics provide delightful virtuoso opportunities. Vivaldi wrote in the slow movement’ s score that this is the sleep of the drunken revelers; the harpsichord takes the foreground over muted strings. The most fascinating movement is the last: a detailed scenario of an autumn hunt with the horses’ stately prancing, the baying dogs, rattling gunfire and the soloist as the fleeing stag, who dies just before the final ritornello.
In F minor,“ Winter” is another menacing season. Vivaldi may be recalling here the terrible winter of 1708 – 1709 when Venice’ s lagoon froze over. In an extraordinary opening movement, the chattering instruments enter one by one, piling up harsh dissonances to evoke the bitter cold. By contrast, the slow movement in warm E-flat major conjures up the cozy atmosphere indoors by the fire, with the pattering raindrops outside imitated by plucked violins. The final Allegro describes people walking slowly on the ice, then quickly with frequent falls. As the string winds blow, the music reminds us that winter also brings pleasure as well as discomfort.
Instrumentation: Harpsichord and strings.
KONZERTSTÜCK
Robert Schumann
Born in Zwickau, Saxony, now Germany, June 8, 1810; died in Endenich, near Bonn, Germany, July 29, 1856
One of the best-loved sonorities in German Romantic-era music was the warm, noble sound of horns, which, because of their hunting-horn origins, seemed to conjure the unspoiled forests of the German landscape. In the winter of 1849, Robert Schumann celebrated this sonority in his Konzertstück or Concert Piece for Four Horns. Despite its name, it is a true concerto in three movements for not one soloist but— in the spirit of the old concerto grosso form like Bach’ s Brandenburg Concertos— a group of them.
In the first half of the 19 th century, the horn was undergoing revolutionary changes. Formerly, hornists had been forced to create their pitches by skillful hand adjustments within the bell of the instrument, which led to many out-oftune notes and uneven-sounding scales. Now valves were added to the instrument to facilitate the production of all pitches in a smooth and reliable way, although it must be said that this valve horn is still one of the trickiest instruments in the entire orchestra to play well.
In 1849, Schumann was living in the city of Dresden, whose orchestra boasted one of Europe’ s greatest masters of the new valve horn: French-born Joseph- Rudolph Lewy. His virtuosity inspired Schumann to write the Konzertstück as well as a chamber work the Adagio and Allegro for horn and piano. As Schumann scholar John Daverio wrote,“ The piece is just as impressive from a visual as from an aural standpoint: the sight of four horns arranged in front of an orchestra creates an image not easily forgotten.”
The opening movement, marked“ Lebhaft” or“ lively,” is an exuberant, extroverted sonata form. Virtually all of its melodic material is derived from the two elements in the four horns’ opening cry: a triplet-rhythm fanfare followed by a swinging four-note idea leaping upward at the end. Despite the energy and intensity of this music, the middle development section introduces some lovely, lyrical interludes for the horns showing off their most mellow tones.
That lyricism and emphasis on warm sonorities really comes to the fore in the second-movement Romanze. Schumann’ s popular“ Rhenish” Symphony has a remarkable movement that describes the composer’ s memories of attending a service in Cologne’ s magnificent Gothic cathedral; this movement captures some of that entranced, mystical feeling as well. The four horns are layered in call-and-response contrapuntal lines; this cathedral-echo effect is also shared between the quartet and the orchestra. The middle section features a warm, very Brahmsian melody, introduced by the orchestra and then given to the horns over a subtle plucked accompaniment. Trumpet calls suddenly intrude, and the entrance of the finale breaks off this beautiful reverie. Marked“ Sehr lebhaft” or“ very lively,” this is a fiery movement driven by a relentless rhythm. A gentler reminiscence of the Brahmsian melody from the Romanze in the horns during the middle development section provides a bit of relaxation before the music rollicks to its hyper-energetic conclusion.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2018
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