Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
Europa Galante | Fabio Biondi
Baroque | 1600-1750
Review No. 4
The Four Seasons is not one work but four: a cycle of violin concerti depicting the yearly intervals. To complicate matters, these concerti belong to a series of 12 known as The Contest Between Harmony and Invention. But only The Four Seasons have become so popular as to have enjoyed hundreds of recordings. This makes choosing a single one to represent them a tough task. However, what Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi achieve in this phenomenal account is refreshingly different and palpably visceral.
Fresh ground is broken
Where some would be tempted to present a comfortable image of Spring – all delicate crocuses and frolicking lambs – these players are urgent, violent and honest. They have nature awakening decisively from winter; shoots punching their way up through the frost-hardened soil, desperate for the early March sunlight. Their petals unfurled, these determined spring flowers are pestered by the wind but defiant against it, thirsty for the raindrops that toss them to and fro in the middle of the third movement (T3-1:50~2:10).
Anything but a lazy summer
Summer is pastoral rather than coastal – no beaches and parasols; just a heady scent that rises from a densely packed flower meadow. Clouds roll quickly overheard, shifting unnervingly the warmth and light that falls on the countryside below. Something in Biondi’s soulful playing speaks of a summer marred by tragedy, especially in the final minute or so of the first movement and opening of the second. Then comes a storm of a third movement. Swift and brutal as wild fire, it tears through a copse, drenching villagers who picnic at its edge.
Stores filled and thanks given
Celebration of a harvest safely gathered in begins Autumn. Its first movement, almost a peasant dance, has Biondi as the village fiddler – giddy with the local brew, and happy to provide a lively soundtrack to the merry-making. Even so, he and Europa Galante take a moment amid the partying to remember the unspecified misfortune hinted at in Summer (T7-3:20~4:27).
Harpsichord and strings in the second movement suggest a cooling of the weather; a musical reminder of the long, dark months ahead. This makes the third movement’s strict rhythm and lightly snapping strings an appropriate accompaniment to preparations for winter.
A cold, cruel winter
The dramatic tension that opens Winter’s first movement builds threateningly, as strengthening strings slice the air like sheets of snow, and harpsichord notes trickle and slip from the ends of icicles. Biondi’s first blizzard of notes leads to a racing sleigh ride across glistening fields; splintered ice spraying up (T10-2:26) as the soloist hurtles excitedly towards the movement’s close.
By contrast, the second movement is a gentle horseback ride along country lanes thick with sun-dappled snow. This happy-go-lucky mood is replaced in the third movement by a perhaps more sinister tone – Biondi’s biting solo lines recalling that earlier, unnamed tragedy.
