Violinist and conductor Fabio Biondi: ‘In The Four Seasons you feel love, disappointment, desperation, happiness’

Fabio Biondi is enthusiastic about all kinds of music. The Italian violinist and conductor, who is bringing Europa Galante, the baroque orchestra he founded in 1990, to the National Concert Hall next week, does a lot of romantic and late-romantic music these days. “That’s my passion at this moment of my life. I am very, very passionate about opera. I enjoy the scores of Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini, this early-romantic opera, and I spend time looking for every little detail of this fantastic music.”

He’s clearly a candidate for the repertoire of Wexford Festival Opera. “We have a lot of treasures and fantastic music that’s just forgotten today. When we talk about even a very famous composer like Donizetti or Bellini, the question is why we don’t perform some operas where the music is great but are out of the repertoire today.” Audiences, he suggests, need to know the true history of music, not just the version given in history books, where so much repertoire is hardly even referenced.

Performances of baroque music are still in exploratory mode, and he brings period-instrument players’ sense of adventure and discovery to music of the 19th century. Biondi talks about Schumann and going back to the composer’s autograph manuscripts to see how many details have been ironed out through the long development of a performing tradition. He doesn’t bring up Mahler’s contention that “Tradition ist Schlamperei” – “tradition is sloppiness” – but his sentiment is similar. And he regards the investigation of sources as more important than whether original instruments are involved.

[ Bring on the baroque: Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante ]

“For example, I’ve just prepared the cello concerto of Schumann from the edition for violin that was prepared by Schumann,” he says. “And what is amazing is the third movement, which we normally play with the same articulation throughout.” Biondi sings it roughly for me. “But in every bar of the orchestra there is some new articulation. This is amazing. Our modern mentality tries to decide that there’s one articulation for the whole movement. This is just a simple example about how many things must be reconsidered.”

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Biondi also relates the investigative approach to the performance of work by living composers. “The approach to early music 50 years ago changed the mentality in terms of curiosity and investigation about a lot of things. This new mentality refreshed completely the view of how to approach the classical repertoire. For example, when you talk about contemporary music, the idea of starting again with baroque music, spending time trying to show every little change in details, articulation, blah-blah-blah-blah, was extremely useful also for coming back to modern music with a little more professionalism and care.”

He thinks that the baroque movement has helped players to concentrate better on what exactly the composer wants. “I remember, when I was very young, having some contact with a composer who told me it was so stressful to think that half of his work was not well performed. A lot of details were lost, and there were enormous mistakes in interpretation. You can compare the approach of the musicians who played contemporary music 40 years ago and today. It’s become more and more professional and more careful.”

The main work in Biondi’s first appearance with Europa Galante at the National Concert Hall is Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, a piece that was neglected for well over a century before achieving currency again in the middle of the 20th century. By the end of the 18th century, he explains, Vivaldi was considered to be a composer without proper education, one who perpetrated a lot of mistakes in harmony.

Between the two world wars, says Biondi, it was the desire of two composers, Gian Francesco Malipiero and Ottorino Respighi, to find a way of flying the Italian flag for pure music. “This was the moment of the big renaissance of Claudio Monteverdi, of course. And Malipiero, who was a genuine Venetian, decided to revive Vivaldi” – though the choice, he thinks, could have been to revive any of a number of other composers.

Biondi gives Antonio Lotti, composer of a celebrated Crucifixus, as an example. “It was thanks to the Conte Saracini in Siena that The Four Seasons was performed again. It was a big success.” Bernardino Molinari conducted the first recording in the early 1940s, and the rest is history. “Now Vivaldi is a big mascot for a lot of musicians around the world,” says Biondi.

Biondi in way rejects Vivaldi recordings from the 1950s and 1960s. “I listen to these old records. For example, of course, not so old, by I Virtuosi di Roma, I Solisti Veneti, and I Musici. It’s amazing because now, in the market, we consider these to be totally out of fashion, performances with a lot of mistakes. But I am a big admirer of these performances. After years, years and years of the interpretation of baroque music, we discover now that a lot of articulation in the old performances is right, even more right than in the beginning of the baroque movement. We must look back with a lot of love and admiration about the beginning of the adventure of Italian baroque music.” He clearly feels that the stylistic backlash was a manifestation of some kind of musical political correctness.

Even if you perform The Four Seasons twice in the same day, it can change from one performance to another. You can do new ornamentation or improvisation

—  Biondi

He first played The Four Seasons for a production of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade. “This melange between Peter Weiss and Vivaldi was extremely interesting, and I think my first recording had a lot of musical ideas that came from this contamination.” He had no notion that the album might be such a big success. “We were very happy about the reaction. This made it possible to continue working together and survive up to today. You know in Italy, we have a big problem about help from the government for classical music. Europa Galante survived because of the success of the records, especially in the beginning.”

He says his performances have changed over time. “First of all, the Venetian repertoire, especially Vivaldi, is really composed through very poor writing. You don’t have a lot of indications from the Venetian composers, especially Vivaldi. You don’t have a lot of counterpoint, and the harmony is not complex. So in one way this music invites you to do a lot of improvisation and ornamentation. It’s exciting to know that, even if you perform The Four Seasons twice in the same day, it can change from one performance to another. You can do new ornamentation or improvisation.

“Our idea about the interpretation changed, because we are old now, and life invites you to reconsider a lot of things. The Four Seasons, beyond the relationship with nature, is a fantastic piece when you think about the evolution of humanity. In The Four Seasons you can find more than rivers, birds, etc. You feel love, disappointment, desperation, happiness. In one way it’s a long adventure in life, and your life is also a long adventure in relation to The Four Seasons.”

And of course there is his delight in what can be discovered in old documents. “It’s nice to wake up every day and know that you can discover something new. It makes our job fantastic. It’s like being a doctor. You don’t do operations the way you used to 20 years ago. Everything has changed.”

He has clear views on why the work is so popular. “There’s the virtuosity. Audiences are very stupefied when music is fast and full of energy. The Four Seasons has incredible moments of energy. Its simplicity is very popular. Because in one way it’s very easy. It’s easier than a symphony by Mahler or Brahms, which are conceptually complex. Vivaldi sticks in the memory. And baroque music today appeals to the young generation. We see that in baroque concerts maybe more than romantic.” This, he says, is because of the improvisation and fantasy.

Biondi still loves The Four Seasons. “I never, ever tire of this music. Honestly, we never fall back on routine, which is one of the great dangers in interpretation. Even if we know everything by memory, we still work on it for a couple of days before a performance. The Four Seasons is a school of life.”

Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante perform Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and arias by Handel and Purcell with the soprano Nardus Williams at the National Concert Hall in Dublin on Saturday, October 14th