Play Vivaldi's Four Seasons

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Four Seasons Summer Vivaldi
Classical Music 4 Seasons
Nigel Kennedy Plays Vivaldi Four Seasons
Play Vivaldi's Four Seasons Album

Vivaldi and Piazzolla’s “Seasons” come together on this new album from Arabella Steinbacher and the Munich Chamber Orchestra. Juxtaposing the two composers’ season-inspired works has been done before, though a novel element here is the new arrangement of the Piazzolla by Peter von Wienhardt. I Solisti Veneti play Vivaldi's Four Seasons With Claudio Scimone. Few works are more widely known and loved than this collection of violin concertos that so masterfully evoke bucolic splendor and the sounds of the seasons. Hear them resound inside (and outside) the walls of the stunning villas of Maser, Foscari, Valmarana ai Nani. Playing The Seasons with a quartet allows for fine exchanges between them, where The Amsterdam Trio is more limited to a one-to-a-part approach. As with the Amsterdamers, their Winter is transposed a semi-tone down (probably to avoid the four flats of Vivaldi’s F-minor key).

3 February 2020, 11:59 | Updated: 3 February 2020, 12:57

Callers waiting to speak to the Department of Work and Pensions will no longer hear music from the Baroque masterpiece, after saying they couldn’t deal... ‘Viv-al-di’ repetition.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has been dropped by the Department of Work and Pensions as its on-hold music, after callers said the repetitive clip was making them feel anxious.

Callers waiting to speak to an adviser about a benefits problem have heard a 30-second loop of ‘Spring’, the first concerto in the great Italian composer’s masterpiece, for nearly 15 years.

But with millions of callers on hold for up to an hour, many people were hearing the clip up to 120 times in a row. One user called the DWP’s choice of music a “cruel and unusual punishment”.

“We had some feedback that the Vivaldi clip caused anxiety for claimants and in particular had an impact on autistic callers,” a DWP spokesperson said.

The Department has said ‘Spring’ will be replaced by a ‘calming’ 20-minute mix of eight unnamed musical tracks that aims to reduce callers’ anxiety by creating “a steady and neutral pace and reducing the issue of repetition”.

“We tested it with claimants in job centres and they overwhelmingly preferred it,” a DWP spokesperson said. “It was seen as more calming and peaceful and light. One person said, ‘I loved The Four Seasons, it’s a lovely piece of music’, but most preferred the new music.”

The DWP has used ‘Spring’ as its on-hold music since 2006. They called it a ‘cost-effective solution’, explaining that while the music would usually be funded by taxpayer money, they were licensed to play the Vivaldi for free.

But while the average helpline on-hold time is eight minutes, waiting times can go up to an hour. The repetitive music appears to have caused unnecessary anxiety for those calling about an often stressful matter.

Five years ago, an unsuccessful change.org petition was opened, demanding the DWP change its hold music.

“Queue times can be long, longer than the whole symphony on occasion, and callers are required to listen to the same sample, interspersed with the same recorded message, for infuriating periods of time,” it said.

“The false jollity of the piece in question, combined with the repetition involved in the short sample length, is largely at odds with the motives of people ringing the line, usually because of a problem with receipt of benefits.”

This Omaha Symphony performance was recorded live at Joslyn Art Museum's Witherspoon Concert Hall on May 10, 2015.

Perhaps one of the most well-known works in The Canon, Vivaldi's The Four Seasons both brings a familiar comfort with each listen as well as new musical surprises. Even during the strange times we're currently experiencing, we watch spring blossom in full, which will yield to summer, fall, and then winter. Vivaldi's musical rendering of our physical seasons lends a similar comfort and beauty we can hold on to — and you can listen to your Omaha Symphony's full performance recorded live right here.

Program Notes

Everyone knows The Four Seasons, even if they don’t know that they know them – their inclusion in over 100 movies and tv shows, along with their incredibly vivid auditory illustrations – has helped them transcend their form as 18th-century concerti to universal culture.

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… but wait, there’s more.

Lots more: Vivaldi wrote over four hundred concerti, and these are just four of them. On a much smaller scale, The Four Seasons is part of a set of twelve concerti titled “The Contest of Harmony and Invention,” a personal project for Vivaldi to see how far he could push his creative genius while maintaining contemporary compositional guidelines. The result may have been beyond even Vivaldi’s expectations: he had composed the gold standard for programmatic music, long before it became either popular or popular practice. In other words: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony? Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben? Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite? All in great debt to a composer who happened upon a set of anonymous sonnets and decided to give himself a challenge. Each season is a set of three movements or ‘scenes,’ following the traditional “fast-slow-fast” tempo structure; here’s what you’ll hear:

Spring: Birdsong dominates over the rumble of a potential thunderstorm; a sleeping goatherd lazes with his loyal canine, who barks – and yes, the violin soloist has to individually interpret “bark” – and a country dance concludes the first set.

Summer: the weather has become hot in the way that makes you appreciate every little breeze and hate every little mosquito bite, and a thunderstorm rolls right through to cool everyone down.

Autumn: The country dancing is back, and so is drinking and hunting!

Winter: The nice weather has gone, and in its place is vicious, bone-chilling, teeth-chattering cold. Luckily, there’s time to watch the rain come down by a cozy fire between outdoor forays. However, the time comes when you have to go back outside and the cold – and the ice – are waiting for you.

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Four Seasons Summer Vivaldi

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Nigel Kennedy Plays Vivaldi Four Seasons

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