The Seasons is from the early 1700's - the Baroque era and was written before Mozart was born. It is one of the most popular pieces from that period and a beacon or landmark in the flow of classical music where names of and times of various eras of classical music can sometimes be confusing, but there is no way this can be mistaken for anything else.
A good guide to how well people like a piece of music is how often it has been recorded. This is one of most recorded classical pieces and that makes choosing one recording hard, as there are so many good ones. I re-listened to a dozen or so while writing this but eventually took Arthur Salvatore's suggestion of the EMI/Fasano recording from his all-time list of favorite recordings. He has lots of good but unconventional suggestions about recordings and stereo equipment.
This recording is good example of why individual recordings of classical music are often missed in music data base searches in the digital age where a one character error is enough to cripple a search and recording meta data information is designed to best display popular songs on iphones. This piece is made up of 4 concertos of three movements each with Italian names. The full name for the third movement Autumn is:
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, L'estro Armonico / Fasano, I Virtuosi Di Roma Concerto for Violin in F major, Op. 8 no 3/RV 293 "L'autunno"
For many data bases the only information you can be sure to see in any classical title are words like "Allegro" or "Largo" which are the composer's suggestions to the conductor as to how fast it is to be played. For ease of reference since this third movement has three movements, the notations are
- Allegro
- Adagio molto
- Allegro
No comments:
Post a Comment