Candlelight concert of Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons', Vaughan Williams' 'The Lark Ascending' and Mozart's 'Overture to The Marriage of Figaro' at Stoke Minster.
Vivaldi Four Seasons by Candlelight comes to Stoke Minster on Friday 30 October, with the music starting at 7pm. The whole evening is built around Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, which is often called the most recorded work in classical music and remains one of the great showpieces for solo violin. Each of the four concertos depicts a different season, and they're shaped by accompanying poems that Vivaldi may have written himself. They evoke a lot of specific imagery: birdsong, buzzing flies, harvest celebrations, drunken revellers, barking dogs, summer storms and winter ice.
Alongside that, the programme includes Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, composed on the eve of the First World War and inspired by George Meredith's poem. Its soaring violin line is meant to suggest a lark gliding high above the mechanised world below. Opening the night is Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, the opera drawn from Beaumarchais' comedy, which was banned at the time. The candlelight setting is the hook here, presenting these cornerstones of the classical canon with their usual emotional power and virtuosity.
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It's a good mix of the familiar and the slightly more atmospheric, with the violin taking centre stage across the whole evening. The candlelight adds a bit of mood to the room, and the programme runs from the bright, theatrical energy of Mozart through to the more evocative, nature-led pieces of Vivaldi and Vaughan Williams. Tickets start from £20.50, and the concert is at Stoke Minster on Glebe Street, ST4 1LP, starting at 7pm on Friday 30 October.
