Shunske Sato Plays Vivaldi: “Autumn” from “The Four Seasons”

Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni) is one of the earliest and most iconic examples of programmatic music. Vivaldi composed the collection of four violin concerti, each depicting a season of the year, during his tenure as music director at the court chapel of Mantua. Together with eight additional concerti, the works were published in Amsterdam in 1725 under the enticing title, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (“The Contest Between Harmony and Invention”).

The vivid, atmospheric nature of The Four Seasons, as well as Vivaldi’s violin playing, were bold and shocking at the time. Boris Schwarz wrote,

His contemporaries knew and admired him; they were struck by the newness of his invention, the flashes of his imagination, the logic of musical design, the variety of tone color in his orchestral scores. To Johann Sebastian Bach, Vivaldi was a revelation: Bach studied his works by copying and rearranging a number of Vivaldi’s concertos until he felt secure in the “modern” Italian style.

Concerto No. 3 in F Major, “Autumn” begins with a peasant song in celebration of the bounty of the harvest. As the Bacchanalian festivities progress, drink flows and the fiddler’s song becomes increasingly inebriated. In the second movement, the revelers fall into a deep sleep. Vivaldi’s surprising extended harmonic progression is filled with surprises and long evades resolution. Time seems suspended. The final movement is the noble, aristocratic music of the hunt. Horn calls ring out and ammunition flies.

This sonnet, perhaps written by Vivaldi, was included in the score:

I. Allegro—
The peasants celebrate with dance and song,
The joy of a rich harvest.
And, full of Bacchus’s liquor,
They finish their celebration with sleep.
II. Adagio molto—
Each peasant ceases his dance and song.
The mild air gives pleasure,
And the season invites many
To enjoy a sweet slumber.
III. Allegro—
The hunters, at the break of dawn, go to the hunt.
With horns, guns, and dogs they are off,
The beast flees, and they follow its trail.
Already fearful and exhausted by the great noise,
Of guns and dogs, and wounded,
The exhausted beast tries to flee, but dies.

This performance, recorded on October 7, 2016, features Shunske Sato and the Netherlands Bach Society. The Japanese-born Sato was the ensemble’s concertmaster and artistic director from 2018 until 2023. His wildly dramatic approach allows us to hear this familiar music with new ears. From drunken fiddle revelries to the deep slumber which follows, this is music filled with intense drama and humor.

Featured Image: “Four Trees” (1917), Egon Schiele