An accomplished violinist, Vivaldi left an indelible impression on his audiences. A witness to one of his performances remarked, “He added a cadenza that really frightened me, for such playing has not been heard before and can never be equaled: he brought his fingers no more than a straw's breadth from the bridge, leaving no room for the bow—and that on all four strings with imitations and incredible speed.” Not surprisingly, Vivaldi was a central figure in the development of the concerto, a musical genre that perfectly complemented the new fascination with virtuoso playing. By pitting a soloist against an orchestra, the concerto thrusts the soloist onto center stage, showcasing the player's prowess while pushing the instrument's limits.  

While Vivaldi penned hundreds of concertos, his most famous work is a set of four grouped under the title Le Quattro Stagioni, or The Four Seasons. Written around the early 1720s, the concertos were published in 1725 as part of a collection entitled Il Cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione (The Trial Between Harmony and Invention), op. 8. The work was popular in Europe throughout Vivaldi’s lifetime; as one critic wrote in 1740, “Who does not know the Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi?” Ironically, the work largely disappeared from the repertoire after Vivaldi’s death, only to enjoy a spectacular revival through mid-20th-century recordings. As the title of op. 8 suggests, The Four Seasons presents an interesting tension between standard musical structure and compositional creativity. Although the concertos fulfill the basic requirements of the genre, consisting of three movements (fast – slow – fast) that include both ritornello sections for the orchestra and flashy solo passages, the bulk of the musical content corresponds to sonnets published with each concerto. Whether Vivaldi wrote the sonnets before the music or vice versa is unknown, but it is clear that the two enhance one another.