Melodiya presents Antonio Vivaldi. Four Seasons, the first recording of a new project devised by Yuri Medianik and Emotionorchestra.
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons are on the top of the classical rating by the number of performances and recordings. For the past fifty years, this music has undergone through very different arrangements. However, this version commissioned by Emotion-orchestra from Norway’s Sverre Indris Joner demonstrates a totally new sound of this popular music.
An artist of a unique collection of talents, Yuri Medianik can be likened to a one-man band of the Medieval or Renaissance period. A bayan player, violinist, conductor, arranger and producer, he has been known for his enthusiastic and versatile activities in the field of academic, folk and jazz music. However, he remains particularly fond of tango.
In 2007, Yuri Medianik founded Emotion-orchestra, an ensemble of four instruments (violin, bayan, guitar and double bass) that have been representing the crossover genre and conquering the audiences at home and abroad with confidence. This instrumental lineup was a basis for the arrangement of Vivaldi’s concertos with a purpose of unveiling Vivaldi’s musical images through the lens of nuevo tango with the entire depth and diversity of its musical palette. The prize-winners of international competitions and musicians with evident individualities – violinist Sergey Pospelov, virtuoso double bass player Oleg Trusov and guitarist Alexey Korbanov – along with Yuri Medyanik perform a new reading of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
“I had a persistent sensation that Vivaldi was unable to formulate it in any other way except through the musical idioms of the Argentinian tango”, writes music critic Artyom Vargaftik.
Four Seasons of Tango was premiered in June 2014 at Jazz Rally in Dusseldorf, Germany. One month after, the musicians played the Russian premiere in Moscow.
