Sunday afternoon will feature a special one-off concert by the Utrecht Festival Strings. The ensemble will perform Mendelssohn’s last string quartet and Vivaldi’s ever-inspiring Four Seasons, with Janine Jansen as soloist. In Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins, Janine will engage in dialogue with the up-and-coming 14-year-old violin talent Lilja Haatainen. The programme will be rounded off by a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor. In Bach’s Double Concerto for Two Violins, Janine will engage in dialogue with the up-and-coming 14-year-old violin talent Lilja Haatainen.
Bach’s most famous double concerto
Although Johann Sebastian Bach never set foot outside Germany, he was well aware of musical developments in Europe. To master the popular Italian solo concerto, he did not travel to Italy himself, but thoroughly studied the compositions of Antonio Vivaldi, the pioneer of the solo concerto. That Bach quickly mastered the Italian genre is evident from, among other things, the famous Double Concerto in D minor for two violins. The way in which Bach plays with the orchestration is extremely original. The two soloists are in dialogue with each other and with the orchestra. Sometimes the orchestra responds literally, sometimes there is only a short interruption, and in other places the orchestra takes over the solo part completely. In the poignant slow movement, the two violinists take turns playing the leading role.
Tribute to Fanny Mendelssohn
‘I cannot think about music… everything seems worthless and empty,’ wrote Felix Mendelssohn ten days after the sudden death of his sister Fanny. On the night of 14 May 1847, she died unexpectedly of a brain haemorrhage. The news of the death of his beloved sister caused Mendelssohn a paralysing shock. He was unable to attend the funeral and left for Switzerland. There he walked and painted and eventually began composing again. At the time, he could not have known that String Quartet No. 6 in F minor would be his last major chamber music work.
In any case, all his feelings are contained in this work: In any case, all his feelings are contained in this work: from desperate outbursts of anger and frustration to intense sadness.
The Four Seasons
The Venetian composer, violinist and teacher Antonio Vivaldi gave violin lessons at the famous music institute Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Venetian orphanages where charity was combined with music education. He composed hundreds of solo concertos for his pupils, and the public performances under his direction attracted the attention of the Venetian public. One of his most successful opuses is Il Cimento dell'armonica e dell'inventione, opus 8, published in Amsterdam in 1725. The first four concertos in this collection have become world famous as The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni). They are superb examples of descriptive music, in which natural sounds such as babbling brooks, thunderstorms, lightning and storms are very precisely reflected in the music. In addition, each concerto is accompanied by a sonnet, probably written by Vivaldi himself, in which the events are accurately depicted.
The most striking examples are the song of two birds in spring (performed by the soloist and the concertmaster with the help of cheerful trills), the thunder and lightning that make the scorching heat of summer disappear, the hunters who go hunting in autumn with horns, guns and dogs, and finally the shivering in the winter cold and the slow pace across the slippery ice. As a listener, you can do without all these instructions, and even if you are unfamiliar with the accompanying sonnets, the four different seasons will be clearly recognisable. Vivaldi’s music is so evocative that the listener only needs his own imagination.