Although many regard Antonio Vivaldi’s cycle of violin concertos The Four Seasons as an “old chestnut,” modern awareness of this set of four concertos only goes back to the 1920s when Gian Francesco Malipiero republished them for the first time since the original 1728 print. Popularized by American violinist Louis Kaufman in the 1940s, they are now among the most popular of all Baroque instrumental pieces. Violinists such as Kennedy, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Janine Jansen have used recordings of the work to help launch their careers. Some may wonder, “what new can possibly done with the venerable old Four Seasons?” The Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin has devised a new wrinkle through a striking new video made of a performance in Italy where they staged the Four Seasons with the help of choreographer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola.

This performance was presented at a festival in the fall of 2009 and shown on television in Europe. A DVD of the performance is already available overseas, which, like the CD, also includes a similar staging of Jean-Féry Rebel’s Les Elemens. No doubt the tiny stature and iron clad concentration of solo violinist Midori Seiler makes the involuntary acrobatics she “performs” in this video possible. Some American viewers might chortle “Oh, that’s so European,” but Vivaldi himself always intended the Four Seasons to be representative of something. He appended four descriptive sonnets to the printed score — the only poetry that we know from Vivaldi’s own hand — to provide a clue to both his artistic and musical intentions. The Harmonia Mundi disc of Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin’s Four Seasons, combined with the Rebel, has made it’s bow in the US in March 2010. No word yet if Harmonia is planning a release of this extraordinary video recording as well. Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin plan to repeat the performance in Versailles in June.

 
Composers Now, a new consortium of New York arts organizations, is sponsoring a weeklong festival highlighting the contributions composers make to the cultural fabric of society. During the week of February 22-28, the festival will present an intensive schedule of concerts and discussions at a wide range of venues, such as Symphony Space, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Manhattan School of Music, Merkin Concert Hall, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Jazz Gallery, Harlem Stage, and El Museo del Barrio. It’s being sponsored by an impressive consortium of organizations, including ASCAP, BMI, and Meet the Composer’s Metlife Creative Connections Program.
 
Tania León
The festival is the brainchild of New York-based composers Tania León and Laura Kaminsky. León draws an analogy with National Poetry Month. “We need to find a way to raise awareness and appreciation of this important community of creators. I would love to see composers as visible as poets.” She and Kaminsky enlisted grassroots support among New York arts organizations to sponsor events that would bring living composers and their work to the attention of broader audiences. Kaminsky, who serves as the group’s coordinator, calls the formation of Composers Now a demonstration of the goodwill and shared vision of the city’s music community. The plan is for the festival to become an annual event in New York, and Kaminsky envisions it expanding across the country, giving audiences in many communities exposure to living composers, not only in concert halls, but in schools, community centers, and retirement communities.

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One of the most dynamic and popular pianists in America’s classical music scene, Christopher O’Riley is the host of NPR’s From the Top, a program that provides a platform for the youngest generations of classical music performers to show their stuff. It is one of the top shows on public radio in America. Its television offspring, From the Top at Carnegie Hall, is set to resume taping in 2010. Although these projects are demanding in their own respect, O’Riley maintains an extraordinary amount of personal creativity as well. He made his conducting debut with the Columbus Symphony (in Ohio) in May and has just released Out of My Hands on the White Tie/Mesa Bluemoon label, an occasion celebrated by a concert to a packed house at the Highline Ballroom in New York City.

O’Riley is pursuing the much maligned, but more often honored, art of transcribing for the piano works not written for it. Nineteenth century composers such as Franz Liszt once transcribed at the pace of a one-man industry. And like Liszt, O’Riley transforms the music of his contemporaries, but O’Riley considers among his contemporaries musicians such as the rock bands Radiohead, Nirvana, and Portishead, something that has sent shock waves throughout the classical industry — can this really be classical music? Rather than taking a trite, easy listening track as was common in the 1960s when classical musicians played The Beatles, O’Riley’s conceptions are wholly serious and easily pass muster as “classical,” and the new album seems his best effort in this endeavor yet. We were intrigued, and when AMG’s Uncle Dave Lewis got hold of Christopher O’Riley he was en route to a From the Top taping in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

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For opera fans in the New York City area, the Metropolitan Opera is offering free screenings of ten productions originally broadcast during the first three seasons of its series, The Met Live in HD. The operas will run on ten consecutive nights, shown outside on the Lincoln Center Plaza, weather permitting. There are 2800 seats available on a first come, first served basis, so plan to arrive early! The schedule after the jump:

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Pianist Jeffrey Biegel is young, ambitious, and brimming with enthusiasm. That alone would not make him automatically eligible for inclusion on the All Music Blog, however Jeffrey has an angle, multiple angles, in fact, on revitalizing the standard repertoire, cultivating new music, and utilizing new media to promote the cause of classical music in our time. Besides, Biegel has two — count ‘em, two — new classical releases this summer, all the more reason to lend him an ear — it should be well worth your time.

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Although only a few years have elapsed since Chinese pianist Xiayin Wang first made her mark in the U.S., interest in her artistry has been swiftly growing since her first Marquis disc, Introducing Xiayin Wang, appeared in 2007. With the release of her third disc and debut on the prestigious Naxos label it seemed like a good time to catch up with Xiayin Wang. When one listens to Wang, one is not thinking about questions of technique, interpretation or performance tradition — she dedicates her pianism to feelings and emotions alone. It’s deeply affecting playing and difficult to describe in words; perhaps it is best to allow Xiayin Wang the opportunity to speak for herself.

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The final installment of the 2008-2009 season in The Met: Live in HD series will be a production of Rossini’s 1817 comedy, La Cenerentola, his retelling of the Cinderella story. The supernatural elements are gone — there is no Fairy Godmother and no pumpkin coach — but the humor with which Rossini invests the music is magic enough. The production features Latvian coloratura mezzo-soprano Elína Garanca as Angelina, “la cenerentola,” with American tenor Lawrence Brownlee as Don Ramiro, the Prince.

The live transmission of La Cenerentola will be on Saturday, May 9, starting at 12:30 pm (ET), with an encore broadcast on Wednesday, May 20, at 7:00 pm (local time) in the US, and on Saturday, May 23, at 12:30 pm (EST) in Canada. (Not all theatres showing the live transmission will participate in an encore showing.) Check your local theatre listings for details, or check out the Met’s website.

The great German composer, conductor, and violist Paul Hindemith died at age 68, a little over a month after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, so the very idea of Hindemith producing “new music” in 2009 seems a little counter-intuitive. Admittedly, the gradual trickling out of bottom drawer content — sketches, unpublished and forgotten early works, etc. — by major classical composers is nothing new. It seems these days as though Jean Sibelius has a half dozen new things come out every few months or so. However, instances where a large score, such as a previously unknown full-scale concerto, from a composer of Hindemith’s stature are relatively rare. That’s what Finnish label Ondine is offering for the first time in their release, Hindemith: Klaviermusik mit Orchester.

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