Summer’s here so it’s an appropriate time for a rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons “Summer” violin concerto, only instead of the usual performance by some huge city symphony orchestra, here’s a version played rather well by a bunch of Italian children from the Zinaida Gilels Violin school.
This performance of Vivaldi’s Summer formed part of the 2012 “Dall’Arte del Fare al Fare Arte” – “From the Art of Making to Making Art” – project held in the interesting town of Castiglione Olona in northern Italy. Why is Castiglione Olona interesting? While you are listening to summer, keep reading to find out.
The orchestra playing is Vivaldi “Gli archi di Zinaida” – “The Bows of Zinaida”. You might want to fast forward a little as the music starts after around a minuted and twenty seconds.
Stop reading, start speaking
Stop translating in your head and start speaking Italian for real with the only audio course that prompt you to speak.
[youtube width=”556″ height=”469″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3fSoSGcXQU[/youtube]
The impressive young soloist is Paolo Tagliamento. Accompanying Tagliamento are violinists Samuele Bianchi, Chiara Borghese, Rachele Castellano, Alessandro Mele, Elisa Scudeller, Giulia Scudeller; violist Leonardo Jelveh; cellists Desirèe Calzavara, Matteo Bassan; double bassist Claudio Cavallin; and harpsichordist Giacomo Fiorin.
A Tuscan Island in Lombardy
Castiglione Olona was labelled by 19th Italian writer Gabriele d’Annunzio as a “Tuscan island in Lombardy”. Sounds as if it’d be a rather nice place to visit this summer.
If you can’t make it to Italy this year, there’s always 2015, the year of the Milan Expo and while you are visiting the Expo, you might like to take a day trip or two. Perhaps Castiglione Olona is somewhere you could add to your day trip list.
