Antonio Vivaldi
Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione (parte 1)

When in the 1720s Antonio Vivaldi wrote Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, he probably did not imagine he was leaving humanity some of the not only most memorable and splendid, but especially most famous pages in the history of music. The concept of "fame" appears in Vivaldi's case to be almost more important than the quality of his compositions themselves (which are nonetheless beyond question): over the years, his music has become so iconic that it stands as one of the absolute references of musical art, so much so that if you ask any person on the street to hum a piece of classical music, a significant percentage will lalala the first movement of La primavera. The performance under review is further proof of the extreme celebrity this music has achieved: the orchestra is, in fact, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, which gathers people from all over Europe with various musical backgrounds. The edition being reviewed presents the first six of the twelve concertos in the collection, namely Le quattro stagioni, La tempesta di mare, and Il piacere.

Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione is a collection of twelve concertos that are heterogeneous among themselves. Only the first four are linked by a bond and are precisely those that have gone down in history as Le quattro stagioni: played consecutively, they last barely three-quarters of an hour and represent one of the peaks of music history. Most music critics consider these four tripartite concertos the highest expression of figurative music ever to appear on Earth, and rightly so: a former child prodigy, former priest, former theater impresario, Vivaldi conceived four concertos based on as many sonnets he himself wrote, which he literally sought to transpose into music; because these poetic compositions have reached us, today we know perfectly well what the music attempts to visually represent, but paradoxically, they are almost unnecessary: Vivaldi's music is simply perfect in every way, from melody to rhythm to arrangement to any other aspect, and it manages to communicate images as precisely and sometimes better than words. The first movement of La primavera is so well-known that it risks the "Mona Lisa effect": it is so famous it might seem clichéd and obvious... but it is not: the astonishing swirl of strings, immediately supported by the basso continuo, precisely pictures in the listener's mind the flight of some birds up to the astonishing, astounding violin solo of rare perfection and great emotion. The other two movements, less well-known, win the fame challenge: the pleasantness of a nap is drawn by one of the first examples (the first example?) of known ambient music, and the final dance is joyous and vaguely Parnassian. The overwhelming renown of La primavera has slightly overshadowed the other seasons: wrong, because perhaps the absolute masterpiece among the four is represented by L'estate; in this exceptional essay of inventive prowess (truly a "challenge of invention") one can hear Vivaldi's art at its highest levels. The mimetic ability is truly overwhelming: in the first movement, calm is interrupted by birds singing the arrival of a storm, in the second, distant thunder is sensed, and in the third, one is swept into a violent downpour. This last movement is certainly one of the most exceptional pieces in the history of music: the melody is superb, and the differentiation of the extremely fast sequences thanks to ingenious contrapuntal solutions, aided by the see-sawing between the strings and the bass in a kind of sped-up barcarole, is completely brilliant. Pleasant atmospheres return in L'autunno, whose three movements (recapturing some melodic ideas from La primavera) describe the harvest & consumption of wine and hunting with freshness still unaltered today; it is perhaps the most predictable and aged part of the work, yet so full of ideas as to have inspired Johann Sebastian Bach on more than one occasion. L'inverno closes the collection just as fascinatingly as L'estate: the first part paints with a nearly pre-Romantic spirit the gusts of icy wind, the second is a divertissement so advanced as to seem symbolic music, and the third represents people walking on ice, sometimes slowly so as not to fall, and sometimes taking great tumbles. L'inverno is the most avant-garde part of the work, at least two centuries ahead and with completely unprecedented and extraordinarily daring harmonic solutions for the time: Paganinian before Paganini, the solo violin in the first movement, Ravelian before Ravel, the drops of rain in the second, and Schoenbergian before Schoenberg, the sotto voce parts in the third. L'inverno gathers in scarce eight minutes (for that is how long it lasts) the subsequent evolutions of instrumental music. No less exceptional are the melodic inventions, the bizarrely placed ornaments, the unexpected reprises, the sudden tempo changes: the final three movements are a collection of ideas executed in a simply perfect manner. The subsequent La tempesta di mare and Il piacere (also structured in three parts and with a figurative purpose, but with a much milder intent and without the support of the sonnets) are excellent examples of musical experimentation at a level that touches pure mathematics, but melodically they are far less convincing than Le quattro stagioni; the "residue" and scales up and down that the solo violin tackles in the two works, respectively, are nevertheless exceptional demonstrations of technical knowledge of the instrument as will rarely occur in the future (except in the case of the aforementioned Paganini).

The famous and excellent violinist Uto Ughi has often made rather strong statements about today's music: he is historically uninterested in the phenomenon, and sometimes he has expressed harsh criticism even toward the great contemporary legends such as De André and Mina, asserting that some peaks of past music are not even conceivable by today's musicians. He probably exaggerates: one could argue that music from the past requires an ear, if not more trained or more cultured, at least somewhat different from that needed for pop and rock music. Listening to Le quattro stagioni, however, can put even the staunchest supporter of today's music's greater listenability compared to that of the past in crisis: Vivaldi created pieces already edited for radio (the individual movements do not even reach five minutes) and so lively and pleasant that even today, coincidentally, they are hugely popular as advertising jingles (which, as is well known, must be catchy). I hope no one will take offense if I write that Le quattro stagioni are the catchiest collection of music ever written.