Concert review: The Four Seasons

Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报, 4 Jul 2024

(Translation)

When I was about ten years old, as a little boy living in Chinatown, my uncle who lived under the same roof as me purchased a phonograph to play pop music. One day, my father suddenly took out a small phonograph record—a Western classical music album – and played it. "This is the famous Four Seasons by Vivaldi. It's very nice!" However, as a young child who had not been exposed to classical music, I could not fully appreciate it.

It was thanks to Red Dot Baroque’s recent performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons that brought back all these memories. Labeling the concert as pure “music performance” would not fully encompass it; it was both a concert as well as a play. Audience members who graced the concert were not regular concert-goers; apart from adults, there were also many children. This installation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was a specially curated program that aimed to promote classical music to young children.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a set of 4 violin concertos, was published in 1725. Each concerto depicts a different season: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, where the music vividly brings to life the characteristics of each season. Each concerto is accompanied by a sonnet that describes the season, such as the birdsongs of spring, the thunder of summer rain, the harvest of autumn, and the chill of winter. Everything comes to life through the music.

These sonnets were the inspiration behind Red Dot Baroque’s dramatic expression of the work. The play saw the musicians transform into characters in the Vivaldi family, where everyone shared their memories of the seasons and helped Antonio compose the 4 concertos. Musicians-turned-actors delivered dramatic lines, and with the help of puppetry, brought fun and laughter to the audience. Before each concerto began however, the command “Let’s tune!” instilled silence in even the youngest of children. Each member of the ensemble was a convincing musician in their own right; they performed harmoniously in both solo and ensemble roles, bringing the audience a vivid depiction of the seasons, filling the theater with the beauty of music.

I first came to know about Vivaldi’s Four Seasons when I was a young boy, yet didn’t grow to appreciate it as no explanation of the music was offered to me. Yet, the seeds of listening to classical music were planted during my younger years, and I gradually learned to love classical music as I grew into my teens, especially when I was studying abroad. Vivaldi’ Four Seasons was a work I played repeatedly on my phonograph, yet I never had the chance to experience it till I heard the Italian group I Musici present it during their tour to Singapore in my adult years, an unexpected encounter that made me so happy. Never did I expect to experience a performance of Four Seasons by the local Singaporean Red Dot Baroque in my later years; what moved me the most was of course the group’s heart and effort in planting the seeds of music appreciation in young audience members, bravo!