Vivaldi introduced virtuosity into the concerto form, allowing soloists to push their instruments to their technical limits at the time.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Vivaldi added descriptive titles to his compositions, like The Four Seasons, to individualize them and make them appealing to patrons.
Composition History
The dedicatee of The Four Seasons, Bohemian count Wenzel von Morzin, first encountered the concertos in an earlier manuscript version that already included four sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself.
Composer Biography
Vivaldi composed no fewer than five hundred concertos, with half of them written for solo violin and strings.
Performer Biography
Itzhak Perlman, the violinist on this recording, revisited Vivaldi's Four Seasons seven years after his first recorded version in 1976.
Composition History
Vivaldi justified presenting The Four Seasons to a patron a second time by adding explanatory notes, mostly from the sonnet texts, to the instrumental parts, claiming they would cast a new light on the music.
Composer Biography
Antonio Vivaldi, the composer, was already a virtuoso violinist in the early eighteenth century, according to contemporary reports.
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