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. Along 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. 4 in F minor, “Winter,” opens with a frigid landscape and chill-induced shivering. Bows placed close to the bridge evoke brittle ice. The second movement moves indoors to the cozy, inviting warmth of an open fire as pizzicato raindrops strike the windowpane. The final movement ventures back into the harsh elements with halting attempts to retain one’s balance on an icy surface.
This sonnet, perhaps written by Vivaldi, was included in the score:
I. Allegro non molto—
Frozen and trembling in the icy snow,
In the severe blast of the horrible wind,
As we run, we constantly stamp our feet,
And our teeth chatter in the cold.
II. Largo—
To spend happy and quiet days near the fire,
While, outside, the rain soaks hundreds.
III. Allegro—
We walk on the ice with slow steps,
And tread carefully, for fear of falling.
Symphony, If we go quickly, we slip and fall to the ground.
Again we run on the ice,
Until it cracks and opens.
We hear, from closed doors,
Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds in battle.
This is winter, but it brings joy.
This adventurous performance, featuring Shunske Sato and the Netherlands Bach Society, was recorded on October 7, 2016 in Amsterdam:
Featured Image: “The Seine at Bennecourt, Winter” (1893), Claude Monet
Sato `s breakneck speed cost him quality and feelings particuarly in the 1st movement.even the slow tender movement lacked feeling mediocre interpretation of this beautiful work.