Who doesn’t love Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? It’s one of my favourite pieces of classical music, and it was amazing to hear it live as performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
The night wasn’t all about Vivaldi’s ever-popular masterpiece, as it was paired with a selection of contemporary works for string ensemble that explored the Aboriginal perspective on Australia’s seasons. Something old, something new.
We got our discounted tickets fairly late, and ended up in the strangest seats I’ve ever occupied in Hamer Hall, in the stalls on the far right edge of the row. It offered a weirdly skewed view of the stage, but on the plus side we were close enough to see the orchestra and other musicians. It’s always fun and impressive to see the sheer physical effort that goes into a performance.
The first half of the program was dedicated to the works composed by the various Aboriginal artists, dedicated to the seasons and elements of nature such as Biwaawa, the cold east wind that’s strongest in winter. Every piece got its own introduction with translation running onscreen; one of them got a knowing laugh from the Melbourne audience with a wry remark that you only have to wait ten minutes for the weather to change. We do love moaning about our unpredictable weather.
These new works were quite experimental in nature and my enjoyment of them was more about the head rather than the heart; I was always interested to see where they would go next, but engaging with a complex piece of music for the first time is rarely easy. I loved the gorgeous playing from the two lead violinists, and the coolest moment happened at the end of the final piece, when the orchestra was joined by a classical singer and a musician with the traditional Aboriginal clapsticks. This combo of classical orchestra and Aboriginal percussion was genuinely awesome and exciting and I only wished there was more of it during the concert.
In the end we were actually grateful for the more challenging first half, because it made the familiar sound of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons feel even sweeter when it finally came. I felt my heart leap with joy and my aural pleasure centres light up like a Christmas tree when the orchestra launched into the exuberant first movement of Spring. James Ehnes, a Canadian-American violinist and the official 2025 Artist in Residence, was absolute perfection as the lead violin and I once again was left in awe of Hamer Hall’s acoustics. I only ever heard Four Seasons performed by a string quartet before and it was wonderful to experience the true fullness of sound with a proper orchestra.
Similarly to the first half, every movement received its own introduction in subtitled Italian, which as I found out later were faithful to the original sonnets composed by Antonio Vivaldi himself. As always, Summer and that dramatic, emotive movement was my personal highlight, but I also got more appreciation for the somewhat overlooked Autumn and its sleepy Adagio Molto, which usually is like that one album track you’re most likely to skip.
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