Phone
Tablet - Portrait
Tablet - Landscape
Desktop
Toggle navigation
Performers
Steinway Performers
Albright, Charlie
Anderson, Greg
Arishima, Miyako
Benoit, David
Biegel, Jeffrey
Birnbaum, Adam
Braid, David
Brown, Deondra
Brown, Desirae
Brown, Gregory
Brown, Melody
Brown, Ryan
Caine, Uri
Chen, Sean
Chulochnikova, Tatiana
Deveau, David
Farkas, Gabor
Feinberg, Alan
Fung, David
Gagne, Chantale
Golan, Jeanne
Goodyear, Stewart
Graybil, Matthew
Gryaznov, Vyacheslav
Gugnin, Andrey
Han, Anna
Han, Yoonie
Iturrioz, Antonio
Khristenko, Stanislav
Kim, Daniel
Li, Zhenni
Lin, Jenny
Lo Bianco, Moira
Lu, Shen
Mahan, Katie
Mao, Weihui
Melemed, Mackenzie
Min, Klara
Mndoyants, Nikita
Moutouzkine, Alexandre
Mulligan, Simon
Myer, Spencer
O'Conor, John
O'Riley, Christopher
Osterkamp, Leann
Paremski, Natasha
Perez, Vanessa
Petersen, Drew
Polk, Joanne
Pompa-Baldi, Antonio
Rangell, Andrew
Roe, Elizabeth Joy
Rose, Earl
Russo, Sandro
Schepkin, Sergei
Scherbakov, Konstantin
Shin, ChangYong
Tak, Young-Ah
Ziegler, Pablo
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Back 1 step
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi
Concertos (4) for Violin, Op. 8 no 1-4 "Four seasons"
Interpretations
About This Work
Controls
Cover
Artists
Label
Movements
×
Add To Playlist
Success
This selection has been added.
Playlist
Create
Cancel
Confirm
Cancel
About This Work
Having produced hundreds of examples, Antonio Vivaldi must be regarded as the indisputable king of the Baroque instrumental concerto. In writing such works for a multitude of different instruments -- violin, viola d'amore, cello, mandolin, flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, horn, and others -- both alone and in various combinations, Vivaldi was a seminal figure in the development of a genre that attained Classical perfection in the works of Mozart and Beethoven, reached its pinnacle in the Romantic works of Paganini, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky, and enjoyed continued currency throughout the twentieth century in the works of composers diverse as Berg, Prokofiev, and Ligeti. Given the sheer quantity of Vivaldi's concertos for violin -- he wrote at least 35 in the key of D major alone -- it's not surprising that many have lapsed into near-total obscurity. On the other hand, it is a grouping of four concertos from Vivaldi's Op. 8 (1725) -- known collectively as The Four Seasons -- that remains the composer's best-known and most characteristic work. Aside from the features that have come to be associated with most of Vivaldi's music -- grace, virtuosity, energetic motoric rhythms -- the concertos of The Four Seasons are remarkable for their extraordinary programmatic imagination, which is counterbalanced by close attention to formal structure. Each concerto is accompanied by a descriptive poem whose imagery becomes an essential element of the musical fabric. The birds that greet the season "with their joyful song" in La primavera (Spring), for example, are colorfully depicted in the work's elaborately ornamented figuration. L'estate (Summer) is painted in similarly vivid colors that portray both the piping of a shepherd and a gathering storm. L'autunno (Autumn) is marked by a folksy harvest celebration and the galloping of a hunting party on horseback. The bleakness and dissonance of L'inverno (Winter) create a severe but expressive portrait that provides a striking summation of Vivaldi's pictorial ingenuity in these four works.
-- All Music Guide
×
Add To Playlist
Success
This selection has been added.
Playlist
Create
Cancel
Confirm
Cancel
CEBA8D1DBF07D7CC1B076AFAF893E6F5