B’Rock Orchestra performs Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagioni – a piece that is overplayed, but underestimated – with a fresh approach. Better than any of his contemporaries, Vivaldi can express a story in music: whistling birds and a barking dog in the spring, the languid heat and a sudden summer storm, the autumn with its harvest festivals, sleeping drunkards and hunting and in the winter shivering and teeth chattering in the snow and finding shelter by a warming fire in the hearth. The original sonnets, possibly by Vivaldi himself, not only inspired the music, but they are also written in the score between the staves as a clear illustration.
Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagioni is part of the volume Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Invenzione opus 8, or The Touchstone for Harmony and Inventiveness. His music asks, or rather, cries out for a descriptive and imaginative approach that goes beyond the notes in the score. Thus Vivaldi creates a story in which all details have been filled in for us: they are readily presented to the listener, so he can follow the story effortlessly.