Vivaldi - The Four Seasons

[AK-Dave]

I'm looking for a good version of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi to buy on CD. Does anybody have a recommendation on which recording I should be looking for? Is there one orchestra that I should look for?

Thanks,
-Dave

[Kiless]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000057CA/qid=1117429231/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-3675895-9163250?v=glance&s=classical

[Kiless]

Oh, Music Dept. also recommends : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000040VO/qid=1117429499/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-3675895-9163250?v=glance&s=classical

[Zep]

I've always liked Nigel's version!

<a href="http://www.streetsonline.co.uk/common/product.jhtml?pid=50019900">
Nigel!</a>

[AK-Dave]

Originally posted by Kiless
Oh, Music Dept. also recommends : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000040VO/qid=1117429499/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-3675895-9163250?v=glance&s=classical
Ok, I just ordered both. If I don't like them, I'm blaming you. Any way I can access the list of what your music dept. recommends? Or are you referring to a feature of Amazon.com?

[Kiless]

Originally posted by AK-Dave
Ok, I just ordered both. If I don't like them, I'm blaming you. Any way I can access the list of what your music dept. recommends? Or are you referring to a feature of Amazon.com?

:D No worries! 'Nigel', as recommended by Zep, is quite good too, he's very popular.

I wish my Music Dept did have their own page of recommendations.... no, I actually just emailed a friend across the courtyard who works in Music (I'd have semaphored, like I do with the LOTE Dept but there's a bloody great big Moreton Bay Fig tree in the way and it's no use) and said 'Quick! Name me some good CDs!' and that's what he fired back at me. They're a good, if odd sort over at music.

{I mean, we all THINK we're the only REAL Department... but Music seems to extend that to not only being the only REAL Department, but that we're a Music School . But we're not a music school. :( You can imagine the fights they have with Drama and Dance and Physical Education; it's quite amusing to us on the periphery.... ;)}

[CFLarsen]

Camerata Bern / Thomas Zehethmair.

Very good. Not your usual interpretation.

[Jorghnassen]

I haven't listened to the four seasons in a while (for the simple reason that I don't have the CD). Now I know I could just take one of the 2-3 CDs my parents have, the question is should I steal the Nigel or the I Musici one? Then again they could just make a copy, and give me the original, because that's legal fair use...

[Batman Jr.]

Gil Shaham with the Orpheus on DG. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000001GME/qid=1117770502/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-9119082-7960806) You know you're getting good playing plus a well-engineered recording just from being told that.

[Psi Baba]

First, you need to decide if you want to hear it performed on period or modern instruments. For baroque music, I prefer Christopher Hogwood & the Academy of Ancient Music or Trevor Pinnock & the English Concert. Both of these orchestras have recorded the Four Seasons. In fact, Christopher Hogwood has produced a new edition based on an alternate manuscript partbook rather than the printed set of 12 concertos titled Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione Op. 8, issued in 1725 by Michel-Charles Le Céne in Amsterdam, from which all printed and performed versions are derived. According to Hogwood, Of this source, which is far from definitive, only one complete copy has survived (Paris, Bibliothéque Nationale), and whatever autograph or manuscript material the composer supplied for the engravers has since disappeared.

Vivaldi himself, however, admitted that earlier versions did exist.

Only the manuscript partbooks now in Manchester Public Library contain all four concertos with sonnets but without captions, and represent a finished state prior to the printed version. Paul Everett, who has made a particular study of this material, suggests that they were copied in Venice about 1726 for presentation to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni; although they postdate the appearance of Op. 8, they ‘accurately transmit a text that is older than the retouched version as published’.

This source contains many readings that are patently more accurate (and often more difficult) than the rather slipshod printed parts, and in a number of important areas (especially articulation, figuring and chromatic inflection) they are far superior.

The Manchester manuscript version is as closely connected with Vivaldi as the Amsterdam print.
AAM - Vivaldi The Four Seasons (http://www.aam.co.uk/index.htm?main%3Efeatures/0110.htm)

[treble_head]

Originally posted by Psi Baba
First, you need to decide if you want to hear it performed on period or modern instruments.

this is the same problem I have with Scott Joplin's music. I have heard a number of the original "player" piano versions made at the time of his popularity, but too many people mess around with the speed and instrumentation. If I had heard the version of the Entertainer from the movie "The Sting", I would have hated it. Trumpets... BAAAH!

As Far as the Four Seasons, I particularly enjoyed the Israel Philharmonic version for a long time now.

[Regnad Kcin]

Originally posted by treble_head
this is the same problem I have with Scott Joplin's music. I have heard a number of the original "player" piano versions made at the time of his popularity, but too many people mess around with the speed and instrumentation. If I had heard the version of the Entertainer from the movie "The Sting", I would have hated it. Trumpets... BAAAH!Never mind the incongruity of using ragtime as period music for a drama set decades after its heyday.

[crimresearch]

The Sting was set in the 1930s...the peak of Ragtime's popularity lasted until 1920, and it could have been about as common to hear Ragtime during the early Depression years, as it is to hear a 10-15 year old hit song today....the big band musicians of the late 30s, early 40s had certainly cut their teeth on it.


"Ragtime's heyday was 1910--20 in a watered-down, ricky- tick style; coin-operated player pianos in public places were probably adjusted to play the piano rolls quickly in order to make money faster, and Joplin found it necessary to print on his music that 'Ragtime should never be played fast'. .....
It led to 'novelty piano' music, seen by some at the time as modern jazz (Sophisticated Innocence: American Novelty Piano Songs by Lincoln Mayorga on the Town Hall label incl. pieces by Zez Confrey; Felix Arndt's 'Nola' and Gus Chandler's 'Canadian Capers', also the impressionistic 'In A Mist' by Bix Beiderbecke, 'The Moth' by Lee Sims, who infl. Art Tatum; etc). Most importantly ragtime infl. jazz, which succeeded it, but ragtime never went away: it was part of the revival of early jazz which began c'40..."
http://www.musicweb-international.com/encyclopaedia/r/R8.HTM

And if anyone wants to hear it played right, the Joshuah Rifkin set is a good start.

[treble_head]

You highlighted many wonderful points, and it's ironic that the first Joplin album I ever owned was The Rifkin album Scott Joplin Piano Rags. My parents bought it for me when I was 9 or 10. I no longer own it (the tape is long lost) but it really is what I judge all others by. That is so cool!

My main problem has always been with the Maple Leaf Rag. People tend to play it slowly, with such a lack of energy, it kills me. His version is so emblazoned in my head, that anything else sounds imitated. Maybe Joplin didn't play it that way, but I gotta say, if he didn't, maybe he should have.

thank you for all your statements, and crimresearch, I love your dao. (not a dirty statement, for those not in the know) lol. I have a small collection of chinese weapons. Any idea how I can use my 3 figure staff without whacking myself in the head every 5 seconds or so? LOL.:bricks:

[Regnad Kcin]

Originally posted by crimresearch
The Sting was set in the 1930s...the peak of Ragtime's popularity lasted until 1920, and it could have been about as common to hear Ragtime during the early Depression years, as it is to hear a 10-15 year old hit song today....the big band musicians of the late 30s, early 40s had certainly cut their teeth on it..."[C]ould have been...as it is to hear a 10-15 year old hit song today..." is more of a reach than I'm willing to make, considering the monumental changes which have taken place over the decades in entertainment mass media.

But even accepting your point: that since we can hear The Beatles today, and acknowledging their influence is still strong and wide-reaching, I would never set a film in 2005 and choose as its period-setting theme song "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." Why? I think the answer should be obvious....Early in 1899, Joplin's first composition was issued, the piano Ragtime piece, Original Rags. Dissatisfied with the usual arrangement whereby publishers purchased popular music outright for $25 or less, Joplin then obtained the services of a lawyer before publishing again. This was a wise decision, for his next publication, Maple Leaf Rag, on which he had a royalty contract paying one cent per copy, was an extraordinary success. Its success was not immediate, however, since only 400 copies were sold in the first year, but it sold half a million copies by 1909, thereby providing Joplin with a steady, albeit small, income. The most famous of all piano Rags, Maple Leaf Rag, formed the basis of Joplin’s renown and justified his title as the "King of Ragtime Composers."

In 1901, Joplin moved to St Louis with Belle, his new wife, and devoted his time to composition and teaching, relegating performance to a minor part of his activities. Adding to his fame through the next few years were such outstanding Rags as Sunflower Slow Drag (1901, with Scott Hayden), The Easy Winners (1901), The Entertainer (1902) and The Strenuous Life (1902), a tribute to President Theodore Roosevelt...http://www.carolinaclassical.com/joplin/

[crimresearch]

'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was over 40 years ago.


Nothing in the plot of The Sting suggest that the characters only listened to the most recent songs (such as swing, which would have been brand new in the mid 30s)...whether Hamlisch knew it or not (less likely, given the way he butchered the performances), it is actually fitting to include the recently popular music.

More like having characters in a 2005 setting listen to Tom Petty, or Bonny Raitt.

[Regnad Kcin]

Originally posted by crimresearch
'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was over 40 years ago.A nit I suspected would be picked.

Fine. The Sting was set in the '30s. For argument's sake, say 1932. "The Entertainer" was released, and a hit (in a looser definition of the term than would be applicable today), in 1902, thirty years prior.

So instead of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," you may select one of the top ten of 1975 (http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Top55-Plus/1975.html):

1. Love will Keep us Together - the Captain and Tenille
2. Fly, Robin, Fly - Silver Convention
3. Island Girl - Elton John
4. He Don't Love You (Like I Love You) - Tony Orlando and Dawn
5. Bad Blood - Neil Sedaka
6. Rhinstone Cowboy - Glen Campbell
7. Philadelphia Freedom - Elton John
8. That's The Way (I Like it) - KC & the Sunshine Band
9. Jive Talkin' - Bee Gees
10. Fame - David Bowie

Which do you choose? Remember, you're creating atmosphere for a story set in 2005.

And you're doing it for your movie which is being produced in... 2075. Your audience does not likely make the distinction that there's a thirty year difference, or that the characters only listened to music contemporary to their time. You're utilizing music to set the scene for the purpose of transporting the audience back in time.

[alfaniner]

So, Vivaldi's Spring would not be appropriate to set a mood in a modern movie then?

[Regnad Kcin]

Getting the thread back on track, eh? ;) Well, it would depend on how the Vivaldi was used.

For instance, in When Harry Met Sally, director Rob Reiner utilized numerous standards (including "It Had to Be You" and "Love is Here to Stay") to set mood and suggest subtext. As with the older couples who appeared throughout to recall the stories of their romances, H&S's relationship was portrayed as a "standard," though a contemporary one. This is underlined with the penultimate scene when the two finally, after years of resistance, admit their mutual love and desire. During New Year's Eve. With "Auld Lang Syne" playing. What's new is old, and vice versa.

Nowhere was it suggested that the music was representative of New York or these people's lives circa 1989. It was music as an element of character.

Now that may be what Marvin Hamlisch and his director were trying to accomplish with The Sting and its use of ragtime. But I didn't see it.

[crimresearch]

Originally posted by Regnad Kcin
A nit I suspected would be picked.

Fine. The Sting was set in the '30s. For argument's sake, say 1932. "The Entertainer" was released, and a hit (in a looser definition of the term than would be applicable today), in 1902, thirty years prior.

So instead of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," you may select one of the top ten of 1975 (http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/Top55-Plus/1975.html):

1. Love will Keep us Together - the Captain and Tenille
2. Fly, Robin, Fly - Silver Convention
3. Island Girl - Elton John
4. He Don't Love You (Like I Love You) - Tony Orlando and Dawn
5. Bad Blood - Neil Sedaka
6. Rhinstone Cowboy - Glen Campbell
7. Philadelphia Freedom - Elton John
8. That's The Way (I Like it) - KC & the Sunshine Band
9. Jive Talkin' - Bee Gees
10. Fame - David Bowie

Which do you choose? Remember, you're creating atmosphere for a story set in 2005.

And you're doing it for your movie which is being produced in... 2075. Your audience does not likely make the distinction that there's a thirty year difference, or that the characters only listened to music contemporary to their time. You're utilizing music to set the scene for the purpose of transporting the audience back in time.


Perhaps you should take a little time to familiarize yourself with the following concepts.

'Fiction'...as opposed to 'documentary'.

'Willing suspension of disbelief'...as opposed to 'a foolish insistence on consistency'.

'Entertainment'....as opposed to 'self-inflicted misery'.

'Enjoyment'....as opposed to 'Contrarian'.

Since you are so anile over something as insignificant as your misundersanding of the the dates of the soundtrack, you should probably stay home and find other sources of entertainment. Pulling the wings off of flies comes to mind.

Or are you going off to start a debate as to why no one should ever be alllowed to enjoy anything, as long as you can find any pedantic flaw in it?

Why of course you will.
:rolleyes:

[Regnad Kcin]

crimresearch:

I opened your posts in this thread (having you on Ignore) as I suspected you responded to me. I was correct, and in so far as you have been able to maintain a courteous demeanor I have been willing to continue the discussion; hope springs eternal, and all that. But you, for some sorry reason, wish to once again personalize what is a discussion of ideas.

I'm hardly suprised. You have zero credibility on these boards. You know that, don't you. It may very well be that you are sincere in your beliefs. Or you might be a puerile little kid, getting some sort of gleeful kicks. But your contributions--the only indicator others have of your personality--have nevertheless revealed themselves to be of little value.

Interesting that this is the Literature forum, since I'm reminded of the words of Shakespeare: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

You may have the last word if you like, but it's unlikely you'll be able to top that.

[Rat]

My favourite 4 Seasons was always by the Württemberg Orchestra with Susanne Lautenbacher doing solo violin. I don't know whether that's available on CD, but it's the best I heard.

Cheers,
Rat.