Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

By Nick Smith, 27th August 2022

My portable rig and I just returned from a Melbourne Chamber Orchestra performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on a glorious 19 degree Melbourne autumn day.

The concert was held at the Clocktower Centre, which is really a fancy name for Moonee Ponds Town Hall in Melbourne’s suburban north. Tickets were AUD $50.

There was a short presentation by Dr Calvin Bowman (who played harpsichord in the performance) who briefly spoke of the imagery conjured up by The Four Seasons, and gave us a short rundown on his own composition -inspired by his time in Daylesford, a nearby Victorian town- which was played as an introduction to the main event.

It wasn’t quite the “Melbourne, are you ready to roocccckkkk??” one expects from other genres, but certainly served to heighten anticipation for the performance.

The venue itself is far smaller than the Melbourne Arts Centre where I attended an event a few weeks back, and by one estimate we had a crowd of around 600 attend.

My portable rig consists of my faithful DX240 with AMP3MOD amp card, along with my IE600s and an EA Cadmus cable. The album I have loaded up here is a DSD256 recording of Rachel Podger’s interpretation of The Four Seasons, which sounds sublime.

Regrettably it must be said my seat for the event wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, as it would’ve been nice to be a little closer to the stage and more centered. Alas, the Clocktower website doesn’t seem to facilitate choosing your seating location when booking tickets unlike the Arts Centre. 

The performance itself was tremendous, though a contrast to the symphony I last attended. Consisting of only string instruments along with the harpsichord, I found this to be a somewhat more cerebral but less bombastically visceral experience than one containing a full orchestra.

Acoustically the venue didn’t impress as much as hoped, though I’m not sure how much role my seating position played in that.

The Four Seasons itself is such a wonderfully powerful, memorable and diverse composition. Having never seen a live performance I found it interesting that they ‘rotated’ violin soloists for the different movements, and each of the three soloists had styles extremely different styles which suited the different seasons. Much as I adore the sound of the violin, the harpsichord also captured more attention than expected as I reveled in its’ charming tone beneath the weight of fiddles surrounding it.

There’s no shortage of opportunity for virtuosity in The Four Seasons and the playing, soloists in particular, was both inspiring and edifying. Being able to observe the posture & body language of the players adds to the experience immensely, and of course the sound itself was completely free of the boxiness of a recording.

So that’s that. Almost two hours of aural splendour, played with great vehemence by honed hands filled with passion. Fifty bucks well spent.