Concerto Copenhagen and Mikkel Bogh bring the Baroque era to life with Vivaldi and a lecture
The National Gallery of Denmark presents an evening of “Baroque in the Present,” featuring Vivaldi’s famous *The Four Seasons* in a modern “staging” by Danish composer Karl Aage Rasmussen, interspersed with three “mini-lectures” titled “The Seasons, the Elements, and the Baroque Now” by Mikkel Bogh, professor of art history.
Le quattro Stagioni, the four violin concertos depicting the year in Italy, are without comparison Vivaldi’s most famous and most played work. Many can hum along without necessarily knowing what it is they are humming to – and to even more people it is almost the definition of what classical music is.
Vivaldi’s music, in the hands of composer Karl Aage Rasmussen and Concerto Copenhagen, remains recognizable. Yet the audience is surprised and kept in constant suspense as the music is broken up, melodic fragments are accentuated, and the melodies pour forth—at once familiar and yet surprisingly new. All of this is done to create the illusion that we are hearing this familiar music for the first time, and so that it can be reborn as current, relevant, and contemporary for us listeners in 2022.
“The music swings as fresh as it did in 1725, when it was first performed. Virtuoso, absolutely brilliant, and utterly captivating,” wrote *Politiken*’s reviewer Thomas Michelsen in September 2019 about Rasmussen’s Vivaldi, performed by Concerto Copenhagen.
The soloist in these famous violin concertos is Fredrik From, concertmaster of Concerto Copenhagen, and the concert will be conducted by Magnus Fryklund.