![]() ![]() That works quite well with the Four Seasons concertos, which are rendered in a colorful enough way that they evoke many of the images in Vivaldi's accompanying printed sonnets (which would have been a profitable inclusion in the booklet). The overall feel is light and agile Beyer doesn't so much push the tempo (although there's a little of that) as imbue the solo lines with maximum variety, creating a fantasy-like feel. In her own words, Beyer seeks "lightweight forces and freedom of phrasing." The group is small, with microphones put down right in the middle, and you hear lots of internal lines and interplay rather than contrast between orchestra and soloist. Her version, with the Italian historical-instrument group Gli Incogniti (who are not quite as unknown as all that), is as strikingly revisionist as the various turbo-powered, operatic Vivaldi recordings that began coming out of Italy in the 1990s, but it is different in flavor. ![]() The continually fast final movement, “Ballet Mécanique with Spagnoletta”, ‘mechanically’ obsesses with a simple and captivating motive, which is being repeated, transposed and transformed extensively throughout the movement – even during the slightly slower “Spagnoletta” fragment, which briefly interrupts the compelling vigor, before the work is concluded with its last rush to the end.Director and violinist Amandine Beyer acknowledges in her booklet notes for this disc that the world may not seem to need another recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, but then she tops the bar she has set up by delivering an entirely distinctive reading of the work. The vivacious “Jig” – with its playful shifts between 6/8 and 3/4 meters – and the lyrical, meditative “Chaconne” – with its expansive melodic gestures – form a pair of dances, which both use a neo-modal idiom and feature contrapuntal cross-references. In the ensuing “Tango”, a sense of a muggy summertime laziness, which opens and closes the movement, envelops a more dynamic and typically passionate and punctuated dialogue between the violin and piano. “Round” comprises four variations of a thematic statement, each time followed by an unexpectedly static-inert, bell-like repetition of one chord, in which the music seems to lose its momentum, but is renewed each time when the next thematic variation recommences. ![]() The sense of excitement and anticipation in this movement is enhanced by the virtuoso solo-violin cadenza and the ‘extinguishing’ coda, which conclude the first movement and lead to the equally bubbly second movement “Round”, which borrows it title from its ‘circular’ melody (which seems to ‘renew’ its energy, each time it is being repeated and transposed). “Dances” opens with an announcing, toccata-like “Commencement Dance”, in which a vigorous melodic motive with upbeat ascending gestures is being exchanged between violin and piano. 1968) finds inspiration in the baroque dance suite and gives it a present-day approach by composing various new dances, which combine (traditional as well as modern) dance rhythms with a direct-expressive contemporary idiom. In “Dances” (2014), a six-movement dance suite for solo violin and string orchestra, here transcribed to a version for violin and piano (2018), the Belgian composer Jeroen D’hoe (b. Enjoy this performance of his 'Dances for Violin'. The famous duo Amandine en Laurence Beyer released a new online album performing Franck, Bartok and D'hoe. ![]()
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