Vivaldi's The Four Seasons(Ep 11 2020)

ANAM Radio

Episode 11, 2020: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Wednesday 9 September 2020 It was in 1725 in the city of Amsterdam when Venetian virtuoso and composer, Antonio Vivaldi’s Il cimento dell’armonia e inventione or The Contest between harmony and invention was published. The composition was made up of twelve sets of concertos for violin, strings and continuo. Its first four concertos, dedicated to a particular season quickly became popular and have since become known as The Four Seasons, a division from the whole Vivaldi did not foresee. The Four Seasons disappeared in the concerto circles after Vivaldi’s death only to resurface in 1948 after a recording of it by Louis Kaufmann. Today it is considered one of the most recorded works of all time, with over 400 versions by different musicians. One of the most interesting features about this Vivaldi composition are the introductory sonnets for each concerto believed to be written by Vivaldi himself. ANAM violinist Harry Ward thought that each sonnet helps set the scene for each concerto and decided to have one person from the orchestra read the sonnet that accompanies each concerto when he performed and directed The Four Seasons with fellow ANAM Musicians last year. In this week’s episode of ANAM Radio, Harry and Phil Lambert (ANAM Music Librarian) chat about remarkable musical details of this classic masterpiece. The Four Seasons performance featured in this episode is from Harry’s recital concert at ANAM in 2019 with ANAM strings and Peter de Jager. Harry was recently recognised as one of Musica Viva’s FutureMakers. Watch the full performance recording athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2FYe5jcss&feature=youtu.be