Brighton Year-Round 2025

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by Candelight Sussex String Quartet

Fever, Sussex String Quartet

Genre: Live Music, Music

Venue: Brighton Pavilion Music Room

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

For a literal close encounter with the baroque, and programme music baroque at that, this delightful concert by the Sussex String Quartet is hard to beat.  The Fever Concerts are designed around candlelight. And the four players and audience literally have to be careful where they place their feet. Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons arrives at Brighton Pavilion’s Music Room for a single night; at just over an hour, a luxury at that.

This extravaganza might be Regency orientalism, but it echoes the sumptuous Venetian palaces Vivaldi’s concertos were played in. And Venice looked to the east too. If with more restraint!

I had thought. looking at the website, that Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 and Pachelbel’s Canon in D (one of 80 by the way) were being played too. Still a slim concert even then. But that’s another stream apparently. I assume it’s an arrangement of the Mozart (say a piano quintet, much as were used domestically at the time), as this is of the small string band normally playing Vivaldi. The name of the arranger wasn’t given, but is I think involved with the quartet. They did a fine job: all the sonorities are here condensed.

The quartet reimagined for four players would be normally served by 20 or more. And each section is introduced first with a brief talk, then wisps of examples played for a few seconds; then each concerto of three movements played through. It lets you take it in. There’s facets I don’t remember or didn’t know, and I’m familiar with the work. So this is educative as well as music on a summer night. If we’re being charmingly instructed, you wonder at the gifted girls Vivaldi himself taught, at the Pieta: illegitimate children who grew up to be virtuosi.

Consummate playing too. A quartet can’t take the demonic risks of a larger band, particularly those devilling on period instruments. What these players convey is a wonderful charactering of each piece with musical examples played to illustrate birdsong, dogs barking in spring, summer storms, autumn drunkenness and winter winds. Above all, much sleep. The players blend beautifully but not blandly.

There’s rich harmonies and they’re on the centre or sweet-spot of intonation the whole time they’re pushing sonorities beyond normal tonality. There’s fantastic moments in ‘Winter’ when the players are asked to play ‘ponticello’: near the bridge of their instruments. It creates a glassy hollow sound, perfect for, say, December. There’s pizzicato too, or plucked strings. I don’t know of an earlier use.

There are moments when say the single ostinato note repeated on the cello, representing the dog, overwhelmed the (necessarily) undernourished string texture. But it doesn’t really matter. Tempi have to be steady, but the gentle zephyrs of spring, the several birds (each introduced) and the occasionally whacky but intensely visual, as well as aural imagination Vivaldi brought, is really nailed by the viola-player; and indeed the performance. All play beautifully, though as our guide said, the lead violin takes the brunt and lead violinist Amalia was exquisite.

Judging by this performance, this quartet certainly deserves not to be anonymous. At this price not providing any information let alone programme is a disservice to the players and audience who’d want to know. I can’t find any clue as to the players’ names, and only by luck the ensemble’s one came to light. The viola player introduced Amalia the lead violinist and that’s as much information as we got. But the presentation and outline history is a model of its kind, a bit like the Anthony Hopkins Concerts that played for so many years.

Briefly, the programme music underpinning this famous collection was not only designed by Vivaldi, but micromanaged in a way he never attempted before or after. By 1725 he’d collated the four violin concertos alongside eight others; and published them as his Opus 8. But fascinatingly, and this is where our guide waxed lyrical, he’d written four sonnets to go with them! Thus each season is read out, then excerpts played.

Programme music wasn’t new. It emerged particularly in France (vocally, with Clement Jannequin in the 16^th century) Germany (lots of battle scenes, particularly Heinrich Biber) and indeed Britain. The great viol composer John Jenkins composed ‘The Siege of Newark’: it’s just one piece depicting the English Civil War.

Vivaldi wrote over 400 concertos for varying instruments, opera and liturgical music, nearly all superb. In The Seasons I might add he also used the Enlightenment formula of keys as charactered too. ‘Spring’s E major is innocence, vernal openness, freshness. The following ‘Summer’ has to contrast in the minor and Vivaldi chooses a sultry G minor, key of grieving. Hence ‘Summer’ is moody, but also being the key of death, believe it or not (Mozart did) there’s a darkness you don’t expect. ‘Autumn’ comes in predictably with F major, the key of bucolic pleasure, rustic life and hunting, all brought in here. Finally its inverse, F minor for ‘Winter’ is the key of formal mourning, desolation and funeral. Perfect for ’Winter’ with the death of the year. Though all is rounded with a sleep.

Grumbles out of the way. With the price of tickets some clearly don’t mind the 40 or so minutes it might take to play The Four Seasons only stretched over 65. Luckily the viola player is so engaging and the talks before each ‘Season’ Concerto so vivid, with short extracts played, that the perfect balance was struck. 65 minutes ended with Karl Jenkins’ delightful short encore Palladio from the 1990s.

But an hour for an elaborate ritual of candles that (as one critic put it) the Wanamaker do so much better…. Their placement seems unimaginative. Evocative of course, and I appreciate the gimmick. Surely something could be done? An image on the Sussex Quartet’s own website/Facebook is an improvement. Still, people afterwards wanted to be photographed with candles behind. A wise critic noticed that without the candles, this mightn’t be a sell-out. Three candles each were perched under the end of each seat-row, meaning you needed to be careful not to singe yourself or your bag. And as no kind of refreshment, even water, was offered (surely dangerous in this heat) I wonder how you’d put the fire out?

But come for the music, if you can afford the ticket. That, and the context framing it will leave you so much richer, despite the weight of your pocket.

Published July 13, 2025July 13, 2025 by Simon Jenner