For today’s “full work” I was going to share Vivaldi’s “Winter” from the set of violin concerti that go by the title “The Four Seasons”. Then I changed my mind and decided to give you all four! 😁
This music is a very early example of “programme music” – there are a set of sonnets (possibly written by Vivaldi himself) that describe each of the seasons and what the music is representing.
I am not sharing the ‘original’ version – instead here is an arrangement for Brass Quintet played (marvellously) by a group that have featured a number of times in my choices – Canadian Brass. This dates from 1985/86 and that was a time when the group were absolutely at their best.
Strangely – in a huge list of ‘derivative’ works that appear in the wikipedia entry for the Four Seasons this particular version is completely absent (and this upload on YouTube only has about 170 views – possibly because the picture of Vivaldi that is used throughout is rather uninspiring 😁)
As I say – this is the whole work – if you want to skip directly to Winter and miss the rest it starts at about 32:15!!