Four Seasons / Concerti di Parigi

Vivaldi's famous Four Seasons, published in Amsterdam in 1725, were so successful that they almost eclipse the other Vivaldi concertos (over 500!). If they owe their success to their particularly expressive and virtuosic 'programme music', Vivaldi was already a sought-after master throughout Europe, and his operatic successes put him at the forefront of Italian composers, his music was indeed particularly admired and often performed in France, and the French ambassador to Venice asked him to write works in honour of Louis XV. It was probably through this that Vivaldi was approached by a French collector who wished to purchase some of his concertos: these are now known as the 12 Paris Concertos: I Concerti di Parigi.  

If their style often refers to features of French music, such as overtures, or typically French Bourrée or Menuet movements, they are above all true and dazzling Vivaldian concertos. Inventiveness, colours, magnificent melodies, flawless virtuosity: all of Vivaldi's assets concentrated in a cycle of twelve astonishingly rich works, a real revelation for the public, with the release of the CD allowing them to be acknowledged as they deserve! They will be served here by the vitality of the Royal Opera Orchestra, led from the first solo violin by its conductor Stefan Plewniak, a true devil of a violinist: and in the Four Seasons, here he is irresistibly spirited, prince of the summer skies and icy demon of the winter!

A Les Productions de l'Opéra Royal production