The Four Seasons

Featuring renowned Canadian violinist Mark Fewer.

Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is one of the most familiar works of classical music today. The Italian baroque master’s four violin concertos are so popular that they have infiltrated our cultural fabric. They are some of the most frequently recorded works in the repertory, and are a ubiquitous presence on movie and TV soundtracks (most recently I, Tonya and The Crown), as well as in upscale hotel lobbies, gourmet food shops and coffee bars. First published in 1725, Vivaldi’s score includes four sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself. This type of “program (or themed) music was already a common feature of Italian music, but Vivaldi’s brilliant writing brought to life the bird chirps, dog barks, rustling leaves and thunder rattles that make these works so evocative. Some 240 years later, Argentinian master Astor Piazzolla created the Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aries) for his Tango Nuevo Quintet. In the late 1990s, Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov made an arrangement for violin and orchestra that contrasted Piazzolla’s southern hemisphere seasons with quotations from their inverse opposites in Vivaldi’s northern hemisphere (summer/winter, fall/spring). Today’s arrangement for cello ensemble is by James Barralet.