antonio vivaldi summer finale from four seasons

#Antonio vivaldi summer finale from four seasons full
#Antonio vivaldi summer finale from four seasons series

There are many interactive guides but I can thoroughly recommend the BBC documentary “Francesco’s Venice” told through the eyes of Francesco da Mosto, a descendant of one of the oldest Venetian families. You may want to find out more about this extraordinary place, especially if you visited it on the 2018 Dark Peak concert tour. Many of the children were deformed and played behind screens so that they could not be seen by the audience – an attitude which would be completely unacceptable in our day. There the boys learnt a trade and the girls studied music, and the most talented were allowed to stay on as adults as members of the prestigious “Ospedale” Orchestra and Choir which became famous throughout Europe.

There is actually a window in the Ospedale which is just big enough to put a child through, and this is how many of the children were delivered in secret to the orphanage. He was an extraordinary teacher and many of his compositions were actually written for his pupils at the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for orphans and abandoned children in Venice. Although he spent much of his life in his native town of Venice, he travelled throughout Europe, hob-knobbing with nobility and royalty, and was extremely famous both as a composer and a virtuoso violinist of almost rock-star status. You might like to find out more about Vivaldi, one of the most influential composers of the Baroque period and also an ordained priest. You might like to listen to, and for more advanced players maybe learn a movement of a concerto for your own instrument.

#Antonio vivaldi summer finale from four seasons full

In this concerto you can hear the solo sections, often where the accompaniment is very light, allowing the soloist freedom to play with utmost delicacy, contrasted with the powerful sound of the full ensemble – in this case a string orchestra with harpsichord. It is normally in three movements (fast, slow, fast). I remember witnessing such a storm on holiday in Italy when there hadn’t been a drop of rain for several months.Ī concerto is a piece for solo instrument (or group of instruments) with orchestral accompaniment. As the peasants feared, the harvest is ruined and the piece comes to a breathless finish. The full fury of the storm is represented by cascades of extremely fast descending scales from all quarters of the orchestra. The Heavens thunder and roar and with hailĬut the head off the wheat and damages the grain. This is interspersed with faster sections representing the rumbles of thunder and leads straight into the final movement. Here the sustained solo violin melody depicts the exhausted peasant farmers as they gaze anxiously at the sky as a storm threatens. As the energetic fast section begins the unmistakable cuckoo call is woven into the solo violin melody, and later many individually characterised bird calls, the rather mournful turtle dove (la Tortorella) with a call quite similar to our native woodpigeon and the high pitched trilling of the Goldfinch.Īs gnats and flies buzz furiously around.

#Antonio vivaldi summer finale from four seasons series

The North Wind sweeps them suddenly aside.Ī series of extremely short phrases (often just two or three notes) create a restless uneasy mood, conveying the idea of the unbearable heat. Soft breezes stir the air but threatening Then sweet songs of the turtledove and finch are heard. Languishes man, languishes the flock and burns the pine You might like to follow the score which has the words in Italian: (NB Spring comes at the beginning at 0’00” of this recording)Īs with Spring, the music vividly depicts the words of the sonnet, translated here into English. You can find each movement at the following timings.

I love the way the musicians communicate such a huge spectrum of emotions, from stillness to the almost brutal wildness of the storm. I have chosen this incredible live performance with Janine Jansen and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, directed from the violin. This week we continue with our exploration of Vivaldi’s Seasons, taking a closer look at “Summer”, the most dramatic of the four.