This project is my first attempt at reducing a classical orchestral score to solo piano. Not only will I have to make the usual performance choices (deciding on the timing and inflection of all the notes to be played), but I also will have to decide which notes of the original score go to the left and right hands, and which ones are not going to make the cut. (Of course, I could have considered a many-hand piano performance with fewer limitations, or even a player-piano one where hands and fingers are not the issue. But it was more fun to work within the constraints of ten human-sized fingers.)
For better or worse, I decided to take on the very well-known piece by Antonio Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, originally scored for solo violin, assorted strings, and basso continuo (typically a harpsichord, with support in the low end from a cello or bassoon). This, it seemed, would be more manageable for me than what Liszt and others have done in reducing entire symphonic scores including brass, wind, and percussion to the solo piano.
Of course, I'm not the first person to take on The Four Seasons with other instruments. It has been arranged for a variety of combos. When it comes to solo piano, there is even a publicly available score by Justin Bird, as well as a very nice 2017 piano recording by Francesco Grillo. But, as usual for a hobbyist like me, I wanted to make my own choices, starting with the MIDI orchestral scores I found online at the Classical Archives. I decided to do the whole work, all four stagioni, to see if I could keep the momentum going over an extended run.
Musically, The Four Seasons is a bit of a pastiche. Each of the four seasons is what amounts to a separate concerto (with a separate opus number) divided into three movements: fast, slow, fast. Each fast movement is itself further divided into a number of passages. It is typical for a quiet languid passage to be followed without warning by a loud frenzied one. (Witness the first few minutes of Summer.) Scattered throughout the score are written designations of features of nature that are intended to be evoked by these passages: birds, streams, thunder, flies, hail, breezes, dogs, and of course, the mandatory sleeping inebriates. Although the chirping of birds comes through clearly enough, in other cases, I would never have guessed at what was intended without reading the accompanying text.
So what kind of music is this? To me, it's a showpiece for the lead violin. The performer must be able to make the violin sing convincingly in the slow passages, but be ready to bolt at full clip at a moment's notice. Historically, the piece falls in the baroque period, but it's the Italian variety, quite unlike the Germanic one. There are some contrapuntal phrases here and there, some syncopation, call and response, but nothing like the extended multi-part fugues you hear everywhere in Bach and Handel. And unlike later orchestral music, there are no large-scale themes to be introduced, varied and developed. Instead, you get a collection of disjoint scenes, more like quick impressions than portraits.
Some of those fast passages are great fun, however. Fun to play and fun to listen to. And it's not just the speed, like The Flight of the Bumble Bee or The Minute Waltz. There's incredible drive and excitement, whooping and hollering. More like Alvin Lee doing I'm Going Home at Woodstock, I'd say. This is Vivaldi at his best, and I think what keeps the piece in the repertoire. Vivaldi at his worst, well, that's another story.
Incidentally, this is a separate issue, but I do find that it helps in appreciating musical masterpieces to recognize how other efforts by the same composer are not at the same level. If you want to get why Beethoven's Symphony #3 is so great, you need to see why it is so much better than his Symphony #8 or Missa Solemnis, say. It doesn't help to pretend, in a spirit of generosity and open-mindedness maybe, that everything works equally well, every piece tied for first place. And it's not only for music. If you want to get why Macbeth and Hamlet are so great, you need to see how Coriolanus and King John are just so drab in comparison.
And on another side note: Shouldn't it be "Frankie Valli and the Three Seasons" since there are only four of them in all? Or maybe I'm wrong and we're to consider Tony Orlando as part of Dawn? Hmmm. Chin scratchers.