Vivaldi’s Four Seasons & The Lark Ascending – Sat 14 Nov, Carlisle

Mozart – Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending
Vivaldi – The Four Seasons

At the heart of the concert is Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the most recorded work in classical music and a defining showpiece for solo violin. Each concerto depicts a different season, shaped by accompanying poems – possibly written by Vivaldi himself – and inspired by the vivid seasonal landscapes of artist Marco Ricci. Across the four concertos, Vivaldi transforms the natural world into vivid musical scenes, evoking birdsong and buzzing flies, harvest celebrations, drunken revellers, barking dogs, summer storms and winter ice.

Alongside this, Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, composed on the eve of the First World War, offers a more reflective perspective. Inspired by George Meredith’s poem, it captures a pastoral world on the brink of change, its soaring violin line suggesting a lark gliding high above the mechanised world below, “lost on his aerial rings / In light, and then the fancy sings.”

Opening the programme we have Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, an opera drawn from Beaumarchais’ recently banned comedy, in which a philandering count attempts to seduce his servant’s fiancée, only to be outmanoeuvred by the servants and his own long-suffering wife.

Whether you’re already in the know or completely new to classical music, this is a programme to be enjoyed by all.