Moonlight Quartet–At West End Gallery
Winter
Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one’s feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold
Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.
Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors…
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.
— Antonio Vivaldi
Just want to share a little Vivaldi today. Here’s the Winter segment from his best-known work, the Four Seasons. Vivaldi also composed four separate sonnets for this work to give the listener a better idea of the feeling he was trying to evoke in each of the seasons. The sonnet for Winter is shown above.
This performance of the Winter portion is on instruments of the period in Vivaldi composed the piece. It is performed by renowned violinist Cynthia Miller Freivogel and the Baroque music group, Voices of Music. I played this piece here several years back but it felt right this morning.
Redtree Times 