Was introduced to this CD quite some time ago, and I really liked it but there wasn't any stock left. But Auntie at Tower Records said she would reserve two for Emily and me the next time new stock came in. Was really excited when the CD arrived, couldn't wait to listen to it. Unfortunately there are CDs that get ignored after some time, of cos giving way to other CDs... whether new ones, or most likely, those that are important aural research for pieces that I'd be practising at the time. This was one of those, I never really got down to listening to it as often as I'd have liked.

So when I decided to listen to it today, I was struck by it once again... can't stop listening to it! It's mainly just Vivaldi's four concertos, with each of Piazzolla's four seasons inserted between them. Weirdly enough, it works even though their styles are so different. I actually enjoy Piazzolla's four seasons more than Vivaldi's concertos. Out of the four I like Winter the most. There's this very nice melody and... erm I don't know how to describe it. But there are some places where it's really very cliche, with the cycle of fifths progression to boot! I'm attracted to Winter because of this section that is so wonderful... maybe it's the harmony, I don't know, there's something that makes it so nice. Lol ok I know, nice is a word we've all been taught to be very vague and weak, but I can't think of anything else to describe that feeling right now. And then there's that catchy, dancy, rhythmic drive that's in all the works by him that I've heard.

The title of the CD, Eight Seasons, and the mixing of two different composers' works, works like that:

The globe, being round, implies two hemispheres. This makes the seasons (except places with infinite sunshine or those with a constant shortage of light) double themselves. That is how we get 2 times 4 seasons (or simply put - 8 seasons). Admitting the global irrelevance of up and down, of North and South, of day and night - in a virtual reality of any classification. In comparison to the age of the Egyptian pyramids, didn't Mozart live an instant ago?
Music, not as an item on charts or a sophisticated matter for connoisseurs, but as a spiritual (and physical) code for wavelengths of communication, was born into the world earlier than words. Who cares, these days, what kind of music (or noises) it was? Probably only science and scientists. But there is no way and no need to label it as we label it for convenience (and profit) most of the things to be sold.
Let's admit it: music always existed and finally didn't depend on either East or West, Classical or Pop. It was just there. Invented or registered as a language of emotion. As a matter of life. It is exactly here, at this point, and not in its description, Vivaldi meets Piazzolla. This meeting isn't meant to be a "crossover", but a dialogue of two geniuses ignoring the frame of time and geography and concentrating on the essentials.
Finally, it is the combination of the fourth dimension and the fifth element that makes them speak and share their (as well as our) passion for the seasons. These seasons, not as a matter of convenience or an expanded catalogue of sounds, but as a simple fact to enjoy and share in the only (short) time we have at our disposal.
The divine seasons are above it.

-Gidon Kremer

Wanted to put Piazzolla's four seasons on radioblog, but the convert file isn't working... shall try to figure out why...