Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is without doubt his most famous and best-loved work. This iconic violin concerto brims with virtuosic, sparkling solo passages. With this Italian-Hungarian programme, Amsterdam Sinfonietta embarks on a journey through space and time. The late-Baroque concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and Pietro Locatelli are paired with a gently modern Divertimento in which Béla Bartók, more than two hundred years later, looks back to the music of the eighteenth century. Streaming our concert is free. Donations are highly appreciated.
At the time of publication, Vivaldi accompanied each of The Four Seasons with a sonnet that describes the musical content of each movement in poetic form. To be on the safe side, he added a few extra indications in the printed score. All four concertos consist of three movements, broadly follow a fast-slow-fast pattern, and contain details that are as delightful as they are realistic: from twittering birds and a barking dog to a bagpipe and cautious steps on the ice. They also give a starring role to the solo violin, played by artistic leader Candida Thompson, sometimes in dialogue with the leader of the first violins or with the basso continuo. Yet each of the four seasons has its own musical profile, shaped in part by the action it depicts.
Four years before Vivaldi, Locatelli had his Opus 1 collection published by the same Amsterdam publisher. He was still living in Rome at the time, but in 1729 he moved to Amsterdam, where he settled and lived on the Prinsengracht until his death. Although Locatelli, like Vivaldi, was an outstanding violinist, he left every trace of virtuosity behind in his four-movement Concerto grosso, Op. 1 No. 11.
“Divertimento broadly means entertaining, diverting music,” Béla Bartók wrote in a letter to his wife Ditta on 10 August 1939, when he was already well advanced in composing his work of the same name for string orchestra. “In any case, it is entertaining for me. Whether the esteemed public will think so too remains to be seen.” The Second World War had a profound influence on the composition: the first two movements begin lightly, before a sharper, more sinister edge enters in the third.
