The windswept weather almost gave us four seasons in one day on March 5th, as I joined once again with Realm of Music for a special birthday presentation of Vivaldi’s immortal Four Seasons. For March 4th was Antonio Vivaldi’s special day; mine is today, March 7th. A perfect joint celebration, hot on the heels of World Book Day!
This time, we were hosted by the super brand new Broadway Theatre, a clever reconstruction of the (still operational) art deco Broadway Cinema in the world’s first garden city, Letchworth.
Realm of Music are a specialist Baroque ensemble, playing on authentic gut string instruments, some as old as Vivaldi himself. So the audience got to hear a very “true” rendition of this very familiar work, complete with wind and thunder machines, operated by leader Penelope Kaempf’s children. This project with me – “Drawn to Music” – is such an exciting venture!
The large audience loved the sounds and indeed seeing the players perform this exhausting, virtuoso series of violin concerti as Realm of Music gave a superb performance.
Meanwhile, I was dressed as Antonio himself, complete with a red wig (Vivaldi was known as The Red Priest), and I introduced each season with a new adaptation of Vivaldi’s original sonnets before painting each season in time to the music.
It’s not widely known that the music – so familiar to us all – is in fact very narrative. Vivaldi’s score is not only prefaced by his sonnets but also annotated with many specific descriptive passages, describing exactly what the music depicts, bar by bar. All of this information was distilled into either words or images in the concerts, to give greater understanding to the audience of what the music actually means.
Vivaldi’s seasons are not all a bucolic idyll, as they follow the trials of a shepherd as he sees crops destroyed by summer storms, and sleep disturbed by gnats, autumn harvesters succumb to excess, and skaters slipping over in the freezing Venetian Winter.
At the end, the art was auctioned for MIND the mental health charity, raising over £1000. This was matched by the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, so a great way to end a fabulous afternoon. Here’s one happy family, who generously bought “Autumn”.
My huge thanks to Realm of Music, of course, for inviting me to join them on this brilliant project. Thanks also to the Broadway Theatre for hosting the day, HNE media, for providing such superb and reliable technological support, and for taking film and photos of the day for future use. Also thanks to David’s bookshop for coming along with some books to sell, and Gabriel Mayhew for the photos!
Realm of Music and I are developing new plans, and also hope to repeat The Four Seasons at other venues. I’ll keep you posted.
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