Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

The Seasons Project
ROBERT MCDUFFIE, VIOLIN SOLOIST AND LEADER
WITH THE VENICE BAROQUE ORCHESTRA

Thursday, October 14, 2010, at 7:30pm | Foellinger Great Hall

Classical Mix Series | In the Italy of 1723, Antonio Vivaldi created a sublime musical portrayal of the seasons around him, and his sound-painting in The Four Seasons still intrigues nearly 300 years later. The American composer Philip Glass looked to this timeless piece as an inspiration for his own work that encompasses the sensations of America today. In Violin Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra: “The American Four Seasons,” Glass summoned a vista of interlocking patterns and tones for discovery, and he incorporated a synthesizer into an otherwise exact replica of Vivaldi’s orchestration. Setting the scene for this soundscape of a country is an installation by Spencer Finch, who works in light to conjure the hues and vibrancy of a moment and a location.

Robert McDuffie—an impeccable and spontaneous musician—and the members of The Venice Baroque Orchestra will take up period instruments and bows as well as their “joy and a sense of discovery” for Vivaldi’s love song to nature (The Times, London). McDuffie, a Grammy nominee who relishes composers from Mendelssohn to John Adams and from Samuel Barber to Leonard Bernstein, leads with a “beaming and agile tone” (Washington Post) in an evening blending delicate buds and balmy winds with sprinkling rain and impetuous night.




Patron Sponsors:
Dixie and Evan Dickens

Patron Co-sponsors:
Lois and Robert Resek
Susan and Robert Welke