![]() ![]() Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, Op.Richard Wagner – The Valkyrie: Ride of the Valkyries.The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music has sold over 200,000 copies and spent over three days as one of the top 10 classical albums on iTunes. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, Royal Festival Hall and Henry Wood Hall in London, the album was released in digital formats in November, 2009 and as a 4-CD set in 2011. Unlike modern violins, which have metal strings, the violins (and indeed, the violas, cellos and double basses) in Vivaldi’s day had strings made of animal gut, giving the instruments a gentler, more mellow sound.The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music is a selection of classical works recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor David Parry. ![]() He also introduced some striking musical effects in the orchestral writing for example, he sometimes has all the orchestral instruments playing the same tune, in unison you can hear this effect in the ‘storm’ music in the first movement of Spring, and at the beginning of the third movement of Summer. With his concertos, Vivaldi set new standards for virtuosity, requiring soloists to play faster and more difficult music than ever before.Before Vivaldi, the solo line in a concerto was more like a musical decoration in Vivaldi’s concertos, the contast between full orchestra and solo instrument becomes the key element in the structure of the whole piece, with the orchestra acting as a musical refrain or chorus (the ‘ritornello’) which alternates with a series of contrasting verses featuring the soloist.The most common pattern for concertos was to begin and end with fast, upbeat movements, and have a slower, more poetic movement in between. Concertos typically have three ‘movements’: self-contained sections, each characterised by a particular tempo or mood.Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons are early examples of the concerto form: a musical structure designed to show off the virtuosity of the solo instrument, which in this case is the violin. ![]()
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