Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Rediscovered
To Jeannette Sorrell—groundbreaking artistic director, conductor, and harpsichordist of the esteemed baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire—“Vivaldi was a master of storytelling.” The group returns to where it began its now decade-spanning relationship with Ravinia on August 15, bringing a new edition of their internationally acclaimed program Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Rediscovered to the summery center of its second home in Chicago.
If anyone could recast Vivaldi’s most famous work in a contemporary light, it would be Apollo’s Fire. Indeed, this dynamic group is “known for its distinctive approach to baroque music; their earthy, physical playing smashing any stereotypes of early music being merely precious and polite” (Chicago Classical Review).
This is their approach to the Seasons, which they view as revolutionary acts of storytelling. Through each movement, each section, the ear sweeps up the senses into the shoes of a peasant, or a prince, walking through 1700s Italy. The music brings pictorial descriptions to life: drunken peasants in the streets, an exhilarating fox hunt over rolling grounds, bird calls and barking dogs, flies and wasps abuzz, and the claps of thunder during a tempestuous summer storm.
To fully bring audiences into this world, Four Seasons Rediscovered offers a quick and polished “tour” of the sound cues and effects to come in each concerto. And to direct the spotlight, lauded Singaporean violinist and concertmaster Alan Choo solos among the virtuoso musicians of Apollo’s Fire.
This unique take on the work adds to a rich and varied history of its use across time and media. Like most music composed before 1750, Vivaldi’s works were virtually forgotten until the chance discovery of his personal collection of manuscripts in 1926 awakened scholarly interest. Even then, The Four Seasons themselves didn’t become really popular until violinist Louis Kaufmann performed them on a CBS Radio broadcast in 1950.
Since then, movements from the set have been used in literally hundreds of films, from 1967’s Elvira Madigan to animated box-office hits Sing and The Secret Life of Pets.
It has featured in television series as diverse as The Sopranos, American Horror Story, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and The Simpsons—not to mention countless TV commercials. There is a good chance that most Americans can hum at least one iconic tune from the piece.
To set the stage for Vivaldi’s thematic material, Apollo’s Fire opens with works from two composers who might not be household names. Marco Uccellini, whose writing for violin helped to forefront the instrument and its development as a solo tool, receives a sonorous expansion from Sorrell’s expert touch with her original arrangement of La Bergamasca, a setting for a dance performed in Northern Italy’s Bergamo. In a specially selected and edited Suite from Alcione, an opera by the French composer Marin Marais, Sorrell highlights the inventive tranquil and tempestuous scenes that emerged some 700 miles northwest, including one of the earliest portrayals of a storm in opera and a thundering sailor’s march that, over the intervening generations, has become best known as the tune of the carol “Masters in This Hall.” Also featured is music by Veronese composer Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco that blends the Italian and French Baroque instrumental traditions.
Ravinia audiences will delight in this stand-out program—a loving ode to the present sweet spot in the Midwest’s mercurial climate—and unforgettable performances by Apollo’s Fire. Plus, the sentiment behind the group’s appearance is mutual. “We are so excited to return,” says Sorrell. “Ravinia is such a beautiful park … the audiences at Ravinia are really very special!”
