Dystopic new Four Seasons issues a powerful warning
Vivaldi’s best-loved work is transformed from an 18th century pastoral idyll to an apocalyptic nightmare in a new setting performed at the Sydney Festival.
![Sydney Symphony Orchestra performing The [Uncertain] Four Seasons at Barangaroo Headland for the Sydney Festival. Picture: Yaya Stempler](https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/9d583f9dc9b517beac7aebc3af972423?width=650)
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Antonio Vivaldi’s best-loved work is transformed from an 18th century pastoral idyll to an apocalyptic nightmare in a new setting which imagines what our world’s four seasons could be like 20 years from now.
The [Uncertain] Four Seasons, brilliantly performed over two nights by Sydney Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Andrew Haveron, is one of this year’s Sydney Festival key events, marking the opening of the outdoor amphitheatre the Headland at Barangaroo.
The project is a collaboration between the SSO, Melbourne composer Hugh Crosthwaite, Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub, design and innovation agency AKQA and German advertising agency Jung von Matt.
As Australian actor and filmmaker Damon Gameau explained in his introductory speech, cities throughout the world are being encouraged to perform their own reimagined versions in time for the Glasgow world climate change conference in November.
DIFFERENT
Vivaldi’s four violin concertos, arguably the best-known piece of classical music ever written, set a series of sonnets describing the seasons to vibrant musical life with trilling birds, rushing streams, drunken peasants, buzzing gnats and hunting dogs all in the mix. The weather is dominant – the bursting plant life of springtime, the summer hail storms damaging a farmer’s crops, autumn’s mellow airs and winter’s icy snow.
From the opening of the familiar Spring allegro of the new work things are markedly different. The irresistible bouncing tune is transformed into a heavily slurring lurch after an unaccompanied solo from Haveron which sounds like something Bartok might have composed.
The all-string and harpsichord line-up of the original is augmented by a large percussion section, with gongs, tubular bells, marimbas and drums all pitched into the action.
Erin Helyard’s harpsichord is amplified and occasionally slightly distorted in the more dramatic moments, and Gameau’s manipulated images of disappearing bush, landscapes melting into blackness and Bosch-like distorted human faces form a sobering backdrop. The message is loud and clear.
Musically it worked pretty well with the familiar melodies veering off into disturbing places. Sound production was also superb. A handful of the large masked audience took an early mark but generally the concert was a success.
As Gameau said, we all have a note to play in this concerto for 2040, not just here in Australia but everywhere in our world.
SYDNEY FESTIVAL
● CONCERT The [Uncertain] Four Seasons
● WHERE Headland Barangaroo
● WHEN Wednesday, January 13
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