On August 21 at 7:00 p.m., one of the leading ensembles of "Petersburg-Concert" — the "Divertissement" Chamber Orchestra, under its artistic director and soloist Ilya Ioff, Honoured Artist of Russia — will perform the programme "The Seasons for All Times" at the Fabergé Museum. The evening will feature works and excerpts from cycles inspired by the seasons: "Spring" and "Summer" by Antonio Vivaldi, "Summer" by Max Richter, "Spring" by Sergei Akhunov, "Summer" and "Spring" from "The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires" by Astor Piazzolla, "Spring" and "Summer" by Osvaldo Requena, and the finale of Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 2, American Four Seasons.
Vivaldi's witty, exuberantly Baroque cycle "The Four Seasons" brings together four concertos for violin and strings. In 1725 Vivaldi published one of his most famous collections, Opus 8 — twelve violin concertos bearing the subtitle "The Contest Between Harmony and Invention". The composer gave the first four concertos of the opus the titles "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn"' and "Winter", each preceded by a short sonnet, presumably written by Vivaldi himself. In contemporary performance practice, these concertos are often grouped together as "The Four Seasons" — a title that does not appear in the original.
Astor Piazzolla was a renowned Argentine musician and composer of Italian descent. "The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires" consists of four tangos: "Autumn", "Winter", "Spring" and "Summer". This music has long been loved by our audiences and has become such a hit that people come to hear it for the title alone. Its distinctive rhythms and harmonies reflect the composer's sense of the passage of time. Piazzolla boldly combines Latin American and jazz motifs with the classical tradition.
Osvaldo Requena's "The Four Seasons" is a colourful work by the Argentine composer that transports the listener to a world where the characteristic rhythms of tango meet depth of feeling and an endless sense of love.
The Four Seasons by the contemporary Moscow composer Sergei Akhunov is perhaps the newest cycle on this theme — it was written in 2014. The work was inspired by Kim Ki-duk's film "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring", which is precisely why the cycle has five movements — five seasons.
The contemporary British composer Max Richter, known for his film work (with Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott, among others), presented his own version of "The Four Seasons" in 2012. Curiously, Vivaldi's musical material is preserved, but it sounds new — combined with the idioms of contemporary musical language. Who knows — perhaps the great representative of the Baroque would have written his masterpiece in precisely this way, had he lived among us today…
Philip Glass's Violin Concerto, the so-called "American Four Seasons", is one of the key works of musical culture of recent decades. The acknowledged master of minimalism wrote it for the violinist Robert McDuffie, who intended to perform it paired with Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons". Notably, Glass refused to give the movements of his concerto the names of the seasons, because it emerged that he and the soloist had different ideas about how the seasons should sound. On the one hand, Glass's concerto seems to 'complement' the most famous "Four Seasons"; on the other, it embodies a unique dichotomy of evolution, in which the stages are at once interconnected and opposed.
Concert programme:
- Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) — "Summer" from The Four Seasons, Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra in G minor, RV 315 (Op. 8)
- Osvaldo Requena (1931–2010) — "Spring" and "Summer" from The Four Seasons
- Philip Glass (b. 1937) — Violin Concerto No. 2, American Four Seasons: Finale
- Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) — "Spring" from The Four Seasons, Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra in E major, RV 269 (Op. 8)
- Max Richter (b. 1966) — "Summer" from The Four Seasons
- Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) — Tango "Summer" from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
- Sergei Akhunov (b. 1967) — "Spring" from The Four Seasons
- Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) — "Spring" from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Performers:
Divertissement Chamber Orchestra
Artistic Director and Soloist — Ilya Ioff, Honoured Artist of Russia
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes, no interval
Venue: first floor of the Fabergé Museum exhibition space