Vivaldi - The Four Seasons [Accardo-I Solisti Delle Settimane Internazionali Di Napoli]After a little bit of a hiatus, i seem to be playing this work more and more, only this month i was listening to Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg play this Concerto [5th September 2010], it's a timeless piece, no wonder it's so popular, you can't argue with good music, and Vivaldi's ten minute Concertos are a treat, they never outstay their welcome, and oftentimes they're over all too soon.
Salvatore Accardo was born in Italy in 1941, he's 69 tomorrow, happy birthday Salvatore!, and has made many recordings for the Philips label, lots of Vivaldi, and Paganini for DG, i like the booklet cover, a simple but effective photo of a Strad, with lines of lettering, and Antonio Stradivari's signature in gold at the bottom.
This recording is made on original instruments, with the Accardo the leader, the group is small, roughly a dozen instrumentalists, and you can feel that in the performance, the keyboard playing of Bruno Canino is quite prominent, Accardo plays a different Strad Violin for each season, an interesting idea.
Again i find that i enjoyed the final movement of summer, it has a frenzy about it, basically it's the orchestra and the violin taking turns to excite the listener, almost in outdoing each other, it starts off in frantic low strings, and then comes the 'rain' [0:12-0:48], the higher strings dividing in two, mirror and echo each other, with their raining down from high to low, the volume might ebb and flow, but it's a real storm, the chamber orchestra also get to show off their virtuosity [1:06-1:29], especially with some wonderful 'waves' [1:20-1:24], and thereafter some more frenzied low strings [1:24-1:28], Accardo also gets the chance to show off his virtuosity [1:29-1:43], it's like a tag boxing partnership thereafter, a real blistering tour de force.
Here's Salvatore Accardo playing the Presto final movement of summer on YouTube.
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