Vivaldi's Four Seasons
Fabio Biondi leads his crack period-instrument ensemble Europa Galante in a programme built around one of classical music’s most famous works, complemented by arias sung by rising star Nardus Williams.
Irresistible to TV advertisers, piped promiscuously as telephone hold music and in shopping malls from Buenos Aires to Mumbai, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons bids fair to being the most popular classical piece of all time. Yet such is the music’s picturesque charm and visceral energy that it has survived over half a century of kitsch and commercialisation unscathed.
Vivaldi included these ever-delightful works in a set of 12 violin concertos published in 1725 under the title Il Cimento della Armonia e dell’Invenzione (‘The Contest of Harmony and Invention’), with a dedication to a Bohemian count Wenzel von Morzin. In order to ‘explain the music more easily’, as he put it, Vivaldi prefaced each concerto with an illustrative sonnet, possibly written by himself, and inserted lines from the sonnets at appropriate points in the score.
In the Four Seasons Vivaldi ingeniously reconciles his descriptive programme with his characteristic concerto form, in which an orchestral ritornello alternates with free solo episodes. In the first movement of Spring the jaunty ritornello symbolises the season’s unchanging aspect, while the episodes home in on a particular detail: the dawn chorus, the murmuring brooks and the passing storm. The Largo’s drowsy violin cantilena depicts the sleeping goatherd against a background of rustling leaves and (courtesy of violas) a barking dog – one of many humorous touches in the Seasons. In the bucolic finale nymphs and shepherds dance ‘to the festive sound of the rustic pipes’, duly evoked by repeated bass drones.
Vivaldi’s Summer is anything but a pastoral idyll. Drooping figures immediately conjure the torpor of a summer’s day. After birdsong imitations, the gentle breezes are challenged by the howling Boreas. Then a poignant solo cantilena portrays the fearful shepherd boy. In the central movement the boy’s plaintive song is threatened in turn by swarms of insects and the gathering storm that will erupt spectacularly in the finale.
The jolly peasant dance that opens Autumn quickly degenerates into tottering drunkenness, hilariously evoked by the soloist. A slower episode depicts ‘the sleeping drunkard’, before the dance rounds off the movement. In the Adagio molto the revellers sleep off their intoxication in a chromatic haze. The hushed intensity of this music seems to transcend its immediate descriptive purpose. Headed ‘La caccia’ (The Hunt) – the finale contrasts the ritornello’s horn calls with the soloist’s graphic portrayal of the flight and death of the pursued stag, punctured by the ‘din of guns and hounds’ in the orchestral strings.
At the opening of Winter the ritornello depicts the cheerless, icy scene conjured in the sonnet’s first verse. Then the solo violin evokes, in swirling, shuddering figuration, the ‘howling wind’, ‘running and stamping feet’ and, finally, ‘chattering teeth’. For the central Largo (‘Passing quiet, contented days by the fireside’) Vivaldi moves from an unforgiving F minor to a warm E flat and a long-spun violin melody over a pizzicato accompaniment that suggests flickering flames. Back in F minor, the finale charmingly portrays the skaters’ frustrated attempts to keep upright, before tumultuous scales kick up a ferocious storm to rival the one that ended Summer.
Europa Galante and Nardus Williams interleave the concertos of the Four Seasons with songs and dances by Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel: a Londoner and and Saxon, born a generation apart, who each in their lifetime became Britain’s de facto national composer.
In an era of lavish multimedia entertainments Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was the most spectacular – and expensive – of them all. The staging, in London’s Dorset Garden Theatre in 1692, cost an outlandish £3,000, and involved a huge cast of singers, actors and dancers. Purcell’s fairy masques had only a vague connection with the play proper, a bowdlerised version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Restoration audiences could not cope with undiluted Shakespeare). But the music, ranging from rustic farce to the ravishing invocations to Sleep, makes The Fairy Queen the richest of all Purcell’s so-called ‘semi-operas’.
The first two songs in Europa Galante’s selection, the tripping ‘Thus the ever grateful Spring’ and the reflective ‘See my many colour’d fields’, are sung by Spring and Autumn in the Masque of the Four Seasons. The Dance for the followers of Night unfolds as a stately double canon in which first violins are imitated by basses, and seconds by violas. Night herself then appears in an aria with muted violins and no basses – a magical, disembodied texture. Purcell is at his most blithely extrovert in the two final numbers: the lusty Haymakers’ Dance, and the song in praise of Oberon ‘Now the Night is chas’d away’, unfolding over a muscular repeated ground bass.
In Purcell’s lifetime and beyond Londoners remained stubbornly resistant to Italian opera. The triumph of Handel’s Rinaldo in 1711 changed everything; and while the anglicised Saxon would have his share of reverses, opera dominated his creative life for the next three decades. Nardus Williams and Europa Galante perform arias from two Handel operas, plus a solo from the allegorical oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth. First heard at Covent Garden in 1757, this was an English adaptation, probably undertaken by the aged Handel’s assistant John Christopher Smith, of his early Italian oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno. After Pleasure is finally defeated by Time and Truth, she gives vent to her despairing fury in the aria ‘Like clouds, stormy winds them impelling’.
Premiered in January 1732, Handel’s Ezio is a typical Baroque sanitisation of ancient Roman history that mingles sexual rivalries and political skulduggery. While the opera was a box-office flop, the score is full of delights, including the buoyant ‘nautical’ aria ‘Finché d’un zeffiro soave’, in which Ezio’s beloved Fulvia resolves to triumph over her misfortunes.
Eight years earlier, in February 1724, Giulio Cesare had triumphed at London’s King’s Theatre. The familiar historical setting doubtless contributed to its popularity, though plot and characters were given a thoroughly Baroque makeover. At the opera’s core is the alluring figure of Cleopatra, who sets out to bewitch Caesar, suffers at his imagined death, and is finally united with him as his ‘tributary Queen’ (as Ceasar already has a wife, marriage is not an option). Her joy at their reunion erupts in the coruscating ‘Da tempeste’, fashioned to display the famed agility of Handel’s prima donna Francesca Cuzzoni.
© Richard Wigmore
Details
Programme and performers
Antonio Vivaldi Violin Concerto in E major, La primavera (Spring)
1. Allegro
2. Largo
3. Allegro
Henry Purcell Suite from The Fairy Queen
‘Thus the ever Grateful Spring’
‘See my many colour’d fields’
Dance for the followers of Night
‘See, even Night herself is here’
Dance of the haymakers
‘Now the Night is chas’d away’
Antonio Vivaldi Violin Concerto in G minor, L’estate (Summer)
1. Allegro non molto
2. Adagio – Presto
3. Presto
George Frideric Handel ‘Like clouds, stormy winds them impelling’ from The Triumph of Time and Truth
George Frideric Handel ‘Finché d’un zeffiro soave’ from Ezio
Antonio Vivaldi Violin Concerto in F major, L’autumno (Autumn)
1. Allegro
2. Adagio molto
3. Allegro
George Frideric Handel ‘Da tempeste’ from Giulio Cesare
Antonio Vivaldi Violin Concerto in F minor, L’inverno (Winter)
1. Allegro non molto
2. Largo
3. Allegro
Europa Galante
Fabio Biondi violin/director
Nardus Williams soprano
Song texts
‘Thus the ever grateful Spring’
Thus the ever grateful Spring,
Does her yearly tribute bring;
All your sweets before him lay,
Then round his altar sing, and play.
‘See my many colour’d fields’
See my many colour’d fields
And loaded trees my will obey;
All the fruit that Autumn yields,
I offer to the God of Day.
Dance for the followers of Night
‘See, even Night herself is here’
See, even Night herself is here,
To favour your design;
And all her peaceful train is near,
That men to sleep incline.
Let noise and care,
Doubt and despair,
Envy and spite
(the fiends’ delight)
Be ever banish’d hence.
Let soft repose,
Her eyelids close;
And murmuring streams,
Bring pleasing dreams;
Let nothing stay to give offence.
Dance of the haymakers
‘Now the Night is chas’d away’
Now the night is chas’d away,
All salute the rising sun;
’Tis that happy, happy day,
The birthday of King Oberon.
Libretto adapted from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Pleasure
Like clouds, stormy winds then impelling,
Disdainful I fly with resentment.
Hark! the thunder round me rolls,
Truth’s awful angry frowns I see:
Her arrows wound my trembling soul;
Nor is there any joy for me.
Ah, no! Truth drives me to depair;
Open, ye rocks, and hide me there.
Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili (1653–1730), translated by Thomas Morell (1703–84)
Fulvia
Finchè un zeffiro soave
Tien del mar l’ira placata,
Ogni nave è fortunata
E felice ogni nocchier.
E ben prova di coraggio
Incontrar l’onde funeste,
Navigar tra le tempeste
E non perder il sentier.
E ben prova, etc.
Fulvia
Until the gentle breeze
unleashes the ocean’s implacable fury,
every ship is fortunate,
every helmsman serene.
But the true test of valour is
to encounter the fearsome waves,
to navigate though the storm,
and not to founder.
Until the gentle, etc.
Cleopatra
Da tempeste il legno infranto,
Se poi salvo giunge in porto,
Non sa più che desiar.
Così il cor tra pene e pianto,
Or che trova il suo conforto,
Torna l’anima a bear.
Da tempeste, etc.
Libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)
Cleopatra
When the ship, broken by storms,
succeeds at last in making it to port,
it no longer knows what it desires.
Thus the heart, after torments and woes,
once it has recovered its solace,
is beside itself with bliss.
When, etc.
Translation by James O Wootton
Artist biographies
Europa Galante was formed in 1989 by its artistic director Fabio Biondi, with the aim of creating an Italian instrumental ensemble to interpret Baroque and Classical repertoire on period instruments. It rapidly achieved success with the release of its first recording of Vivaldi concertos. The ensemble subsequently built on this, with a substantial discography that has received many prestigious awards.
It has appeared at many leading theatres and concert halls, including Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Royal Albert Hall, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Sydney Opera House.
Major festivals at which Europa Galante has appeared included the BBC Proms, Edinburgh International Festival, Baalbek Festival in Lebanon, the Spring Festival at the National Center of Performing Arts in Beijing and Hong Kong Arts Festival.
In addition to performances of the most famous works of the Italian Baroque repertoire, not least Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the ensemble has also presented rediscovered treasures of the 1700s. In Italy the ensemble collaborated with the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in the reconstruction of oratorios by Antonio Caldara, Leonardo Leo and Gian Francesco de Mayo, as well as Alessandro Scarlatti’s works such as Carlo re d’Allemagna, Il trionfo dell’onore and Massimo Puppieno. This research work has garnered awards, including the prestigious Abbiati Award, awarded to Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi in 2002 for Il trionfo dell’onore and in 2008 for the restoration of Haydn’s Filemone e Bauci.
The group’s interest ranges beyond the Baroque and Classical eras, and in 2001 it made its first foray into bel canto repertoire with a performance of Bellini’s Norma on original instruments at the Verdi Festival. This marked the beginning of a path of re-evaluating Italian 19th-century music, which has included Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Rieti Festival and Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Bremen Festival. Since 2016 the ensemble has been a regular at the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, presenting works by Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi’s Macbeth and Il corsaro. There, it has also performed Stanisław Moniuszko’s Halka, Flis, Hrabina and Verbum nobile.
Europa Galante is made up of musicians who, under the guidance of Fabio Biondi, have achieved through years of work and mutual understanding a common vision and passion for what they do. This has led to an increasing focus on chamber music, which ranges from Italian Baroque sonatas to the quintets of Boccherini and the unpublished quartets of Carlo Monza.
The ensemble is resident at the Teatro Due Foundation in Parma.
Fabio Biondi is a musician who was initially guided by pioneers of period performance, but whose repertoire now spans three centuries. He is acclaimed equally for his advocacy of well-known masterpieces and of new discoveries.
In 1989, following extensive work with specialist ensembles, he founded Europa Galante, which quickly became the foremost Italian period-instrument ensemble. Together they have breathed new life into Baroque, Classical and early Romantic repertoire, performing at leading international festivals and stages, including the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Wiener Konzerthaus and the Enescu and Edinburgh International festivals.
Fabio Biondi brings this authentic and engaging approach to modern symphony and chamber orchestras, too, which he both conducts and directs from the violin. Recent and future highlights include the Helsinki, Hong Kong and New York Philharmonic orchestras, the Bamberg, Berlin Radio, Chicago, Finnish Radio and Frankfurt Radio Symphony orchestras, National Symphony Orchestra, Washington, DC, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, RAI Torino, Toulouse Capitole Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. He was Artistic Director for Baroque Music at the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra for 11 years.
His passion for opera takes him to major houses, including Zurich Opera, Berlin’s Staatsoper unter den Linden, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Theater an der Wien. From 2015 to 2018 he was Music Director of Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, where he conducted productions of Donizetti, Rossini, Haydn and Verdi.
As a violinist he gives recitals across the world, including at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Auditorio Nacional de Música Madrid and Cité de la Musique. This season he performs at Wigmore Hall, Chopin Festival in Warsaw and in Geneva and Seville.
His award-winning discography has garnered many accolades and he has recorded with Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Philippe Jaroussky, Vivica Genaux and Rolando Villazón. Recent releases include albums of Mendelssohn and the Carlo Monza quartets and his first recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas.
He has been an academician of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia since 2011, and was named in 2015 an Officer of the National Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture; in 2019 he received the medal of Courage and Veracity from the Polish government.
Fabio Biondi is Artistic Director of Farnese Festival, which he launched this summer, gathering together leading specialist ensembles to celebrate the Italian and European tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries.
He plays a 1768 Gennaro Gagliano, owned by his teacher Salvatore Cicero and kindly lent to him by the Salvatore Cicero Foundation in Palermo, where he was born.
Nardus Williams was the winner of the Rising Talent Award at the 2022 International Opera Awards and has established herself as one of the most exciting and versatile young British singers of her generation.
Highlights of this season include her debut at Boston Lyric Opera as Leontine (Chevalier de Saint-George’s The Anonymous Lover); returns to Opéra de Rouen Normandie for concert performances of Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) and to the role of Belinda (Errolyn Wallen’s Dido’s Ghost) with Philharmonia Baroque; performances of Fauré’s Requiem with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, tours with the Dunedin Consort, Europa Galante and Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century; and a return to Wigmore Hall.
Last season she made her house debut as Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) for Opéra de Rouen Normandie, sang the Countess (The Marriage of Figaro) on the Glyndebourne Tour and returned to the Glyndebourne Festival as Adina (L’elisir d’amore). On the concert stage she returned to Wigmore Hall, continued her collaboration with the Dunedin Consort, performing programmes of Handel and Bach, as well as Mozart’s C minor Mass at the BBC Proms, and sang in Tippett’s A Child of Our Time with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Recent highlights include Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress) and Ciboulette (In the Market for Love) for the Glyndebourne Tour; Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) and Micaëla (Carmen) for English National Opera; Countess for Opera Holland Park; the world premiere of Dido’s Ghost; and Mimi (La bohème) and Donna Anna for Houston Grand Opera.
On the concert platform recent recital highlights include Oxford Lieder, Leeds Lieder, Wigmore Hall and St John’s Smith Square; her BBC Proms debut in 2021 with the BBC Philharmonic under the baton of Ben Glassberg, returning with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and La Nuova Musica; and Handel’s Messiah at Kings Place and English National Opera.
Nardus Williams was a member of the Houston Opera Studio for the 2018/19 season and was a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne and a Harewood Artist with English National Opera. She trained at the International Opera School at the Royal College of Music where she was the recipient of the prestigious Kiri Te Kanawa Scholarship.
