In a program that highlights music through the centuries, the musicians of Amsterdam Sinfonietta let their string instruments resonate to the fullest in works by Edward Elgar, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Antonio Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons.
Elgar’s Serenade for Strings opens the evening with a tender, expressive sound world, in which the first contours of his later masterpieces can already be heard. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 is a unique piece among the six famous Brandenburg Concertos, composed around 1721. This work lacks a soloist: Bach wrote it for an unusual ensemble of three violins, three violas, three cellos, and basso continuo—a remarkable 3×3 structure that evokes a modern composer more than a Baroque master.
Vivaldi demonstrates his brilliance in The Four Seasons: already in his time, this beloved classical work was enormously popular. It sparked a revolution in musical imagination, conjuring images of babbling brooks, singing birds, a barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, drunken dancers, frozen landscapes, and a crackling winter fire.