Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (CD review)
Also, Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. JoAnn Falletta, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Beau Fleuve Records 605996-998562.
By John J. Puccio
Don’t get me wrong. I have always enjoyed the work of conductor JoAnn Falletta and her Buffalo Philharmonic, and her performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is as elegantly affectionate as any I’ve heard. It’s just that it probably isn’t different enough from the multitude of other good recordings of the piece most of us already have on our shelves to warrant a purchase for the Seasons alone. No, it’s the inclusion of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires that makes the album worthwhile.
Italian composer, violinist, impresario, teacher, and priest Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) wrote Le quattro stagioni (“The Four Seasons”) between 1718 and 1720. Almost everybody recognizes the four tone poems with their chirping birds, galumphing horses, barking hounds, and dripping icicles. Vivaldi intended the music to accompany four descriptive sonnets, and they constitute the first four parts of a longer work he titled Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione ("The Contest between Harmony and Invention"). While most of us hardly remember the other eight concertos in the set, we cannot easily forget the first four, if only because they’ve been recorded so many times on practically every instrument known to man.
So, how does Ms. Falletta handle all this? As I said earlier, she approaches it with an elegant, refined affection, and the violin solos by Nikki Chooi are beautiful. The entire affair is well paced, not too fast, not too slow, with contrasts, pauses, extensions, and such providing color to each little tone picture. Here’s the thing, though: If you are used to a period-instrument, historically informed performance (Philharmonia Baroque, La Petite Bande, English Concert, Tafelmusik, Boston Baroque, etc.), Ms. Falletta’s account may be about the furthest thing from it. Still, for a modern-instruments rendering, this one is on a par with some of the best.
Nevertheless, Ms. Falletta’s version of Vivaldi is not the main attraction here. It’s the coupling of The Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, also called Estaciones Porteñas (or “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” in English) by the Argentine composer of tangos Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) that makes the album worthwhile. He wrote the four short pieces between 1965 and 1970 and scored them for a quintet of violin (or viola), piano, electric guitar, double bass, and bandoneón. They are, of course, tangos, and Piazzolla intended them to represent the four seasons in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. But he didn’t necessarily write them to be played as a suite; it’s simply that after completing all four of them, it seemed the natural thing to do, which he often did. However, he didn’t play them in the order Vivaldi did; he organized them as “Otoño” (Autumn), “Invierno” (Winter), “Primavera” (Spring), and “Verano” (Summer). More often, though, contemporary musicians order as they are here: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Ms. Falletta uses an orchestral arrangement by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, with violin solos by Tessa Lark. It’s quite the best I’ve heard these works done, particularly the haunting “Winter” selection.
Producer Bernd Gottinger made the recording live at Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York in September and October, 2020. Yes, the box says “recorded live” in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. One must assume the audience observed social distancing, so there couldn’t have many in attendance. This is supported by the fact that we hear nary a peep from them, and any applause that may have been there was edited out. Everything is dead quiet. Nor is it as closely miked as so many live recordings are, making it additionally hard to tell it from a studio production. Which I count as a blessing.
Anyway, the sound is quite good. It’s perhaps a tad forward and bright, but otherwise displays excellent detail, with strong dynamics and superb clarity and transparency. While it’s also a bit one-dimensional, without a lot of hall ambience, an extended frequency range tends to make up for it in its own way. So, as I said, it sounds like a good studio production rather than a live recording.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor
Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.
Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.
Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor
For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.
For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.
William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor
Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.
The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.
Ryan Ross, Contributor
I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.
I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.
Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst
I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.
Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.
Mission Statement
It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.
When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.
So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio
Contact Information
Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com
Readers with impolite, discourteous, bitchy, whining, complaining, nasty, mean-spirited, unhelpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@recycle.bin.
