The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi remains one of the most famous and beloved of baroque music pieces, with tunes that have been used in popular culture, ring-tones, video games, television commercials, and films, and with recordings made in classical, jazz, world music, choral, and countless other styles and genres. A performance of the original music, though, is a classical experience everyone should have at least once. Tonight, that's just what audiences will be treated to when four violin soloists from Camerata Del Sol join with the New Mexico State University Philharmonic for all four violin concertos that comprise the work.
In this conversation recorded on Zoom, Jorge Martinez (conductor of the NMSU Philharmonic, as well as other ensembles), Joseph Kneer (guest conductor from Trinity University) and Intermezzo host Leora Zeitlin discuss the inventive techniques, accompanying poems, and history of the work, along with what makes it so appealing.
"Vivaldi's ability to project images through music is almost second to none," Kneer observed. Martinez added that people in Vivaldi’s time sometimes said (and some still say today) that programmatic music – or music that is tightly illustrating a story – was not the highest level of music, But Vivaldi, he said, “just trying to prove otherwise, lets us know how passionate and how innovative he was about everything he was doing."
The four violin soloists from Camerata Del Sol featured in The Four Seasons are Daniel Vega-Albela, Roberto Jurado, Ángel Ornelas, and Fernando Rodríguez Fernández. Other musicians from Camerata del Sol will join the students in the NMSU Philharmonic Orchestra (as will Joseph Kneer during the Vivaldi). The concert also features the popular Serenade for Strings, by Sir Edward Elgar, which Kneer will conduct. The concert is at 7:30 p.m. at the Atkinson Recital Hall on the NMSU Campus.
Musical clips heard in the interview:
1) "Serenade for Strings: Larghetto" by Sir Edward Elgar, English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (Sony Classical #67176).
2) "The Four Seasons,” by Antonio Vivaldi: clips from Spring, Summer and Winter performed by Christina Day Martinson with Boston Baroque, conducted by Martin Pearlman (Telarc #80698).