#VIVALDI FOUR SEASONS SPRING FULL#

It is perhaps the most instantly recognizable piece of Baroque music to the general public, even if few could accurately identify it. The most recent to feature “Spring” was 2016’s The Secret Life of Pets. The first film to credit Vivaldi was Les Enfants Terribles in 1950, and the first to feature “Spring” was A Metafisica dos Chocolates in 1967. However, “La primavera” (Spring), the first concerto in Vivaldi’s set, is most often used in modern films as an auditory cue that coincides with visuals of expensive dinnerware, resplendent mansions, and stately chandeliers. The playfulness and lighthearted nature of “Spring” indeed reminds one of the first sublime day of the new year, when children may doff their winter coats and play in the rolling meadows. Vivaldi intended each concerto in “The Four Seasons” to evoke emotions of a particular season and serves as an example of pre-19th Century programmatic music. Vivaldi and other composers of the Baroque period have had their music featured in many films, often as stock music meant to evoke a sense of bourgeois excess, fancy tastes, or extreme wealth. At least 95 of those soundtracks feature the “Spring” movement from his 1723 cycle of violin concertos entitled “The Four Seasons.” The work will be performed at the Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891 ), on 31 October.Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, and the Caricature of Wealthĭespite his death almost 200 years before the premier of the first modern film to feature an accompanying score, Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) is credited as part of the music department for 70 films and on the soundtrack of 439 films. That's what I'm really pleased with: my aim was to fall in love with the original again – and I have.'

It's almost a kind of jump-cut aesthetic – all those extreme leaps between different kinds of material.

#VIVALDI FOUR SEASONS SPRING FULL#

It's so dynamic, so full of amazing images. 'The original Four Seasons is a phenomenally innovative and creative piece of work. If the work sends listeners back to the original with new ears, that's all part of the point, says Richter. It's really eerie: Max has kept Vivaldi's melody, but it's pulled apart by the ethereal harmonics underneath it.'Ĭan it all work beyond the recording studio? Audiences at the Barbican in London will find out later this month, when Vivaldi Recomposed is given its debut performance, with Hope backed by the Britten Sinfonia under the baton of André de Ridder. 'It's as if an alien has picked it up and pulled it through a time warp. 'It's really out of this world,' he says. The slow movement of Winter is another standout moment for Hope. But even in poking fun at the original, there's always enormous respect.' You end up with a rickety and slightly one-legged Vivaldi. He pulls the rhythm around, starts dropping quavers here and there.

'What really threw me was the first movement of Autumn. 'I had to deal with all the curveballs Max throws at you, the way he does things you don't expect.' The experience clearly messed with Hope's mind. 'It was incredibly thought-provoking,' he says. And imagine how it felt for Recomposed's solo violinist Daniel Hope: having played the original for decades, he – and more importantly his fingers – faced a surreal task when he first picked his way through Richter's score. Part of the fun of the album is that your ears play tricks with your memory of the original: these familiar melodies do unexpected things, resulting in an experience that's both disturbing yet full of strange delights. It's pattern music, in a way, so there's a connection with the whole post-minimalist aesthetic I'm part of.' I was pleased to discover that Vivaldi's music is very modular. 'There are times I depart completely from the original, yes, but there are moments when it pokes through. You can hear this chemical reaction particularly well at the opening of Richter's reworked Summer concerto, which has become a weird collision of Arvo Pärt-likemelancholy in the solo violin and a minimalist workout for the rest of the strings.

This involved 'throwing molecules of the original Vivaldi into a test tube with a bunch of other things, and waiting for an explosion'.

Vivaldi four seasons spring