wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Monday, October 21 at 7pm
Monday, October 28 at 7pm

Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” hardly requires an introduction, representing the crowning achievement in Baroque pictorial music and the most-recorded work of all time (some estimates put the number of available versions at over 100). Less known is the fact that for each of the four violin concertos--“Spring,” “Summer,” “Fall,” and “Winter”--Vivaldi penned four sonnets to accompany each selection. "Autumn" vividly characterizes the season in rustic terms.

Set in the pastoral key of F major, “Autumn” opens as peasants celebrate the fall harvest with songs and dances. Wine flows, and soon the peasant revelers are fast asleep in their “sweet repose” (the slow-moving cello line depicts the sleeping drunks!). After the subdued second movement, the finale illustrates daybreak, as the hunters go forth to hunt with horns, guns and dogs. The entire panorama will be featured on the Monday, October 21 Evening Music, in a beautifully played and recorded disc by the trailblazing Italian period-instrument ensemble, Il Gardino Armonico (Teldec 97671).

Alongside Vivaldi’s tried-and-true masterpiece, with its invigorating rawness, Astor Piazzolla's "Four Seasons Suite" seems like an exotic modern species, rich in sultry tango rhythms and sumptuous melodies. The suite’s third movement, “Autumn in Buenos Aires” is often heard in a version for guitar solo, though it has also been arranged for the small instrumental combinations in which the composer's music is typically heard.

Violinist Gideon Kremer caught many by surprise in 1994 when he fused Vivaldi’s and Piazzolla's fall classics into a single, masterful recording, titled “Eight Seasons” (Nonesuch 79568). Featuring the Kremerata Baltica--the band he assembled from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania--Kremer creates a wonderfully pungent musical mix. The autumnal selection from this CD will be featured on the Monday, October 28 edition of Evening Music.

More Impressions on the Fall Season...

Chemistry of Autumn Colors

Commentator Ted Levin explains the many variables that give New England its distinctive blaze of fall colors.

Pumpkins

Whether used as a decoration, pie filling or simply carved up into a scary face - October is the month of the pumpkin.