300 years have already passed since this masterpiece was composed!

Published in Amsterdam in 1725, the melodies of this colorful and poetic musical fresco are omnipresent even today… and yet we never tire of the inventiveness of this inspired music, in which summer storms alternate with wintry tremolos!

No one knows the exact year Antonio Vivaldi composed his Four Seasons (Opus 8, N. 1-4). Author of more than 500 concertos, half of which are for violin, Vivaldi published his four concertos, Spring, Winter, Fall, and Summer, as part ofIl Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Invenzione, Op. 8, a collection of twelve concertos printed by Michel Le Cène in Amsterdam in 1725. They are thought to have been composed around 1716.

We know that the Four Seasons were already famous before their publication, and greatly appreciated by various European monarchs, including Louis XV, who regularly asked for them to be played. From 1728 on, the Concert Spirituel included them in its repertoire. Vivaldi performed the solo violin part himself and could count on his students, the excellent female musicians of Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, to accompany him.

Following Vivaldi’s death, his music fell into obscurity: until the middle of the 20th century, only a few scholars were aware of his works. In 1913, the musicologist Max Pincherle decided to dedicate his doctoral thesis to Vivaldi, marking the beginning of his progressive rediscovery.