Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we will explore a Vivaldi-themed program coming to Armstrong Auditorium Tuesday, November 12th. The Zurich Chamber Orchestra and its music director, violinist Daniel Hope, will bring Vivaldi's wildly famous Four Seasons to Armstrong Auditorium, which we've explored on this program before. But on the second half, Maestro Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra will present a reimagining of this Vivaldi classic in a work composed for Daniel Hope called Vivaldi Recomposed. This piece is by the famed film score composer Max Richter. So stick around as we discuss Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed and this orchestra led by Hope, today on Music for Life.
This is Daniel Hope and I'm thrilled to be coming back to North America this November 2019 for eight concerts with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, who might be music director now for the last three years. It's a wonderful ensemble and together we're going to be offering Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter, a work which reframes the great original and that in combination with Vivaldi's timeless masterpiece, The Four Seasons. Looking forward very much to seeing you on the road and hope you can join us. We'll discuss this program as well as the artist presenting it on today's episode. Now, our regular listeners will be aware that we devoted an entire episode of Music for Life to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. So I'll just direct you to the archives if you want to know more about this piece.
We will have to review a little of it today to discuss the Richter work Vivaldi recomposed. But to hear about the original Vivaldi work in more depth, be sure to check out episode 14. It's in season one. Episode 14 is called Music for Seasons. Now, if this exquisite program weren't enough, consider the caliber of artists presenting it here at Armstrong. Founded in 1945, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra is now one of the leading ensembles of its kind, winning international recognition in its nearly 75-year existence. Regular invitations to international festivals, performances in Europe's leading centers of music, concert tours on almost all continents, and numerous critically acclaimed CD releases.
testify to the worldwide renown of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. In its years under the world-acclaimed principal conductor Sir Roger Norrington from 2011 to 2015, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra did much to establish and enhance its excellent reputation. Its repertoire is broadly based, extending from historically informed Baroque performances to collaborations with jazz, pop, and folk musicians of our day. In 2017, two of the orchestra's CD releases were honored with an Echo Classic Award in the Classics Without Borders category. Since the 2016-17 season, the orchestra has been led by music director Daniel Hope.
Maestro Hope, a violinist and London native, has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for 25 years and is celebrated for his musical versatility as well as his dedication to humanitarian causes. Winner of the 2015 European Cultural Prize for Music, whose previous recipients include Daniel Berenboim, Placido Domingo, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Hope appears as soloist with the world's major orchestras and conductors, also directing many ensembles from the violin. In October 2017, the documentary film Daniel Hope, The Sound of Life was screened in European movie theaters. Daniel Hope was the youngest ever member of the Beaux-Arts trio during its final six seasons. He has performed...
in the world's greatest halls and festivals, has collaborated with the world's most distinguished conductors and orchestras, and he has commissioned over 30 works from some of our day's most respected composers. Hope is also one of the world's most prolific classical recording artists, with over 25 albums to his name, many of which have won several awards, as well as garnering numerous Grammy nominations. His album of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and Octet with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe was named one of the best of the year by the New York Times. His recording of Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, which reached number one in over 22 countries, is, with 160,000 copies sold, one of the most successful classical recordings of recent times. Hope has also penned four best-selling books published in Germany by the Roval Publishing Company. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and in Germany also presents a weekly radio show. He provided us with a written program statement that I want to quote a little of here as I think it will generate excitement for this upcoming performance. He writes, I first experienced Vivaldi as a toddler. One day I heard what I thought was birdsong coming from the stage. It was the opening solo of La Primavera from the Four Seasons. It had such an electrifying effect that I still call it my Vivaldi spring. How is it possible to conjure up so vivid, so natural a sound with just a violin?
Now, if you're familiar with Vivaldi's four seasons, and as I explained in episode 14 of Music for Life, Vivaldi was trying to imitate the sounds of these seasons by using a solo violin alongside a string orchestra. And the famous first movement begins with the solo violin imitating the birds of spring. As Hope describes in his program statement, and as we said in that episode, Vivaldi writes a sonnet for different aspects of the seasons and writes in the score where he is trying to depict these aspects of his poem. As Maestro Hope said, quote, no composer of the time got music to sing, speak, and depict quite like this, unquote.
Daniel Hope continues, Today the four seasons, with more than 1,000 available recordings, are being reimagined. In spring 2012, I received an enigmatic call from the British composer Max Richter, who said he wanted to recompose the four seasons for me. His problem, he explained, was not with the music, but how we have treated it. We are subjected to it in supermarkets, elevators, or whenever a caller puts you on hold. Like many of us, he was deeply fond of the seasons, but felt a degree of irritation at the music's ubiquity. He told me that because Vivaldi's music is made up of regular patterns, it has affinities with the seriality of contemporary post-minimalism, one style in which he composes. Therefore,
He said the moment seemed ideal to reimagine a new way of hearing it. I had always shied away from recording Vivaldi's original. This is still Hope writing. There are simply too many other versions already out there, but Mr. Richter's reworking meant listening again to what is constantly new in a piece we think we are hearing when really we just blank it out. In this program, pairing Vivaldi's original with Max Richter's brilliant new take, I feel both works inform and reflect on each other to create fresh and exciting connections. And that is how the program at Armstrong will work. Vivaldi's original four seasons will comprise the first half of the program. The second half will be Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed. I should also...
Daniel Hope wrote us to explain this program addition. He said, The Zurich Chamber Orchestra has been fortunate to receive an important operational grant from the Swiss Arts Council. In appreciation, I have chosen to include a wonderful five-minute work by Swiss composer Alfred Felder in our program. Alfred Felder, born in 1950, is one of today's leading Swiss composers, and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and myself have had the privilege to commission his work timeless in 2019. So let's talk about this much-anticipated Vivaldi recomposed by Max Richter. And just briefly, before we do, let me introduce you to Max Richter. Though born in Germany, Richter was raised in London, England. After some distinguished schooling, he founded a contemporary classical music ensemble that championed works of minimalist composers. Then in 2002, he released his debut album, Memory House, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
BBC Music described it as a masterpiece in neoclassical composition. Among other works is perhaps his most unique composition, Sleep, an eight-and-a-half-hour-long lullaby, which he intended to be slept to. In September 2018, it was performed in Antwerp Cathedral for an audience provided with 400 beds. But Richter truly demonstrated the extent of his prowess in minimalist and postmodernist music with Vivaldi recomposed in 2012, receiving favorable acclaim from contemporary classical music critics. Richter says of his own work, quote, Richter continues composing and performing to this day and to much acclaim. The LA Times said, Richter works in a tone that is sincere and serious. Many of his pieces could be described as beautiful. It's a style at odds with the fashionable inscrutability of postmodernism. The Atlantic writes, no contemporary composer expresses the same complexity of emotion on screen as Max Richter, whose work pervades modern culture from film to television to dance to theater. And The New Yorker says that he writes, quote, notes that seem to reach for a place beyond the mortal world, unquote. Max Richter's most recent and probably most well-known work is the soundtrack for Ad Astra, the blockbuster film starring Brad Pitt.
The majority of the music we'll be exploring today will be Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, and I plan to compare some of what he does to Vivaldi's original so you can appreciate this reimagination of the classic work. I already played you a little bit of the original Vivaldi version of Spring. Here's Max Richter's opening movement to Spring. This is a recording of Daniel Hope with the Concert House Camera Orchestra Berlin, Andre de Ritter conducting. Just like in the original, when the solo violin comes in, it's representing the chirping of birds, but notice how Richter reharmonizes the accompaniment underneath.
For the remainder of this movement, he'll keep exploring this chord progression underneath the chirping violins until the piece builds and builds to its loudest point and then ends. That was the opening movement to Spring from Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter. In the second movement of Vivaldi's original work, he was having the music depict this sonnet of his. On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him. Different parts of the orchestra represent the rustling leaves, the bark of the dog, and the violin soloist represents the sleeping goat herd. Max Richter preserves these elements in his with a slightly different accompaniment figure in the orchestra and with the occasional reharmonizing of the supporting chords. I'll also point out another difference as we go.
Unlike Vivaldi, Richter takes the violin soloist up an octave for a variation of this melody, giving it a more plaintive feel. That was the serenely beautiful second movement of Spring from Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter. Now, I don't really have time to play all the movements of every piece, and I'm going to have to skip the third movement of Spring.
Now, moving into the summer section, let me remind you what Vivaldi was trying to do in his original. As we've discussed, Vivaldi wrote four sonnets or poems to represent each season. Each concerto was meant to musically depict the exact content of those sonnets. This section of the summer sonnet talks about men and flocks sweltering under the blazing sun's relentless heat, which is depicted by a slow opening. Then it talks about the cuckoo's voice and the sweet songs of the turtle dove and finch. You can easily hear the cuckoo represented in the solo violin.
Finally, this section of the poem describes soft breezes turning into a threatening wind that portends a violent storm. You'll hear how Max Richter stays true to these descriptions in how he recomposes this movement. When he gets into the final section of this first movement, the impending storm, you will start to hear how he reharmonizes the material and also how he puts rhythmic stress where we wouldn't expect, a technique known as syncopation. Let's hear this now, and I'll also point out the moment where Richter takes a bit more liberty with the material later in the movement. Richter departs a fair bit from the original and gives the violin soloist a soaring descant or counter melody to ride over the top of this chord progression, and he'll explore this for the rest of the movement. That was the first movement of summer from Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, based on Vivaldi's famous four seasons. Both works will be featured at Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, November 12th, when the Zurich Chamber Orchestra performs with its music director and violin soloist, Daniel Hope. The second movement of Vivaldi's summer concerto is marked Adagio e Piano, Presto e Forte, or Slow and Soft.
fast and loud. So this movement contrasts these two tempos and dynamics, and it's meant to depict a goat herd being constantly awakened from his nap by lightning and thunder. The dotted rhythms in the orchestral accompaniment are also supposed to depict gnats and flies buzzing furiously around. Here's a little of Vivaldi's original to remind you how this movement goes. Richter's movement abandons the loud, fast, contrasting sections and dwells only on the soft, slow sections. It begins with high tone clusters, and then the lower part of the orchestra does more of the original Vivaldi-esque rhythmic underpinning. Finally, the soloist comes in with the melancholy melody, which, over Richter's harmonies, has quite an exquisite angst to it. Enjoy this gorgeous second movement of summer from Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed.
That was the exquisite slow movement from summer in Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, a reimagining of Antonio Vivaldi's classic work, The Four Seasons, for violin solo and orchestra. Now, as popular as the first movement of spring is, the final movement of summer may be just as well known. Here's a little of the Vivaldi, where he's trying to depict a summer thunderstorm, so you'll be reminded what this sounds like. Max Richter takes the stormy nature of this movement and works it in a similar way. However, he adds some modern cross rhythms in the low strings to give it more of a modern groove, if you will. He also ends this movement with a serene, cosmic-sounding, quiet ending. Let's hear that now.
You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we are exploring the Vivaldi-themed program coming to Armstrong Auditorium Tuesday, November 12th.
The Zurich Chamber Orchestra and its music director, violinist Daniel Hope, are bringing Vivaldi's famous Four Seasons to Armstrong. And on the second half, Maestro Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra will present a reimagining of the Vivaldi classic in a work composed for Daniel Hope called Vivaldi Recomposed, a piece by the famed film score composer Max Richter, which we are spending most of our time exploring today. To do that, we're hearing a recording of Daniel Hope as soloist with André de Ritter conducting the Konzerthauskammer Orchestra Berlin. And to demonstrate some of the original Vivaldi work, I'm using a recording of Itzhak Perlman with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. We just heard the stormy third movement of summer, with a more ethereal and quiet conclusion. And that was, of course, from Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed. Let's move on to the autumn section. Vivaldi bases the first of three movements on the idea of peasants celebrating the harvest with song and dance. The second half of this first movement becomes suddenly slow, as it represents the wine flowing so freely at this event that many find their relief in deep slumber. Here's how the movement starts for Vivaldi's original.
And now we'll hear Max Richter's take on this, where he basically takes this opening celebratory section and gives it a clever modernism in his use of rhythm, dropping or skipping certain beats to give it a slightly off-kilter feeling. And then later he moves into the slow, slumber-like section of the movement, just as Vivaldi does, but gives it more of a contemporary-sounding chordal underpinning. I think you'll find it luxuriously beautiful. Enjoy this first movement of Autumn.
That was the first movement of Autumn from Max Richter's work Vivaldi Recomposed. The movement starts in a festive manner, but ends in a section depicting slumber. And what a richly beautiful reimagining of Vivaldi's material in that movement. The second movement of Autumn was meant to depict more sleeping, so another slow movement. The third movement of Autumn is lively and bold and depicts hunters going out at dawn with their dogs and horns and their success in bringing down their prey. You can hear the horns depicted in how Vivaldi writes for the string orchestra in his original, and we'll listen to this until the violin soloist comes in. What Max Richter does is fixate on that opening motive in the violin solo. Now let's hear that in his work.
That was the third movement of Autumn from Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed. This was a work composed specifically for Daniel Hope, the violin soloist, performing at Armstrong Auditorium Tuesday, November 12th with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, a highly acclaimed orchestra for which Hope is the artistic director. They'll be performing Vivaldi's original classic, The Four Seasons, on the first half of the concert, and on the second half, they'll be featuring Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, which we are exploring for the majority of this episode today. The next movement would begin the winter section of this piece. Now, in our season preview episode this season, I play the first movement of this recomposed winter concerto, which takes Vivaldi's rendition of Shivering in the Wintertime and puts a modern rhythmic twist on that. It's probably my favorite movement from this work, and if you'd like to hear it, you'll just have to go back to episode 106, previewing the 2019-20 season, and listen about 13 minutes and 20 seconds in. The second movement of Vivaldi's Winter is very well known. It has this famous melody played by the violin soloist over pizzicato accompaniment, meaning plucked strings from the orchestra.
The plucked strings are meant to depict cold rain coming against a window, but the soloist's melody is meant to depict being inside and warned by a fire. But let's notice what Max Richter does with this. He basically eliminates the plucked string accompaniment, giving it a more cosmic, ethereal treatment, while the melody pretty much remains intact. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we have explored the Vivaldi-themed program coming to Armstrong Auditorium Tuesday, November 12th. The Zurich Chamber Orchestra and its music director, violinist Daniel Hope, are bringing Vivaldi's famous four seasons to Armstrong. And on the second half, Maestro Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra will present a reimagining of this Vivaldi classic in a work composed for Daniel Hope called Vivaldi Recomposed, a piece by the famed film score composer Max Richter, which we've spent most of our time exploring today. More information about this and all Armstrong Auditorium events can be found at armstrongauditorium.org. You can also follow Armstrong on social media.
media, and you can follow this program on social media at MusicForLifePCG. We just heard the famous second movement of Winter, but we heard it from Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed, which takes Vivaldi's well-known melody from that movement, and instead of putting it over plucked string accompaniment, he puts it over a constant, sustained, atmospheric sonority in the string section of the orchestra. We're going to end the program by hearing the final movement of Vivaldi Recomposed and the third movement of this Winter section of the work. In Vivaldi's original, this movement was supposed to depict the act of walking carefully on the ice, the fears of slipping and falling, and his music represents falling to the ground and even the crackling of ice under one's feet. In Richter's work, he centers it around one motive from the solo violin and just orbits that for this movement. Meanwhile, part of the orchestra is playing...
long-sustained chords, while other parts of the orchestra are playing short, crisp, repeated chords to help establish a driving rhythm underneath. Let's hear this final movement. We've been listening to a recording of Daniel Hope as soloist with the Concert House Camera Orchestra Berlin under Andre de Ritter. Special thanks to Seth Malone for his research assistance in today's episode. And here is the final movement of Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter. I hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you soon at Armstrong. You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM Dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.