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: