Encounters IV: Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and John Corigliano's "The Red Violin"

Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” needs no introduction. One of the best-loved works in the history of music, it encapsulated the glories of 18th-century writing for strings. Four concertos for violin, one for each of the seasons of the year, with four wonderful sonnets penned by Vivaldi himself to accompany them and add word-pictures to the wonderful images conjured up by the music. The Athens Camerata has played this work many times over its 20-year career, but this time their baroque bows, gut strings and historically-informed performance practice will imbue the concertos with a new and contemporary hue. With the Camerata’s superb violinists taking one concerto each, this is Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as we’ve never heard them before.

In the second part of the concert, the Athens Camerata will be exchanging their period for modern instruments to interpret one of the finest contemporary hymns to the art of the violin. The music written by the award-winning American composer John Corigliano for F. Girard’s wonderful “The Red Violin” justifiably won him the Oscar for Best Film Score. In the composer’s words: 'The "Red Violin" spans three centuries in the life of a magnificent but haunted violin in its travels through space and time. A story this episodic needed to be tied together with a single musical idea. For this purpose, I used the baroque device of a chaconne: a repeated pattern of chords upon which the music is built. Against the chaconne chords, I juxtaposed […] a lyrical yet intense melody representing the violin builder's doomed wife. From these elements I wove a series of virtuosic études for the solo violin, which followed the instrument from country to country, century to century'.

The suite based on the soundtrack is brought to life by one of the most important Greek violinists of our times: Giorgos Demertzis.