Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi's Four Seasons Daniel Rowland

• Vivaldi (1678 - 1741), Max Richter (b. 1966): Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons:
• 1Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Spring 000:37
• 2Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Spring 102:24
• 3Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Spring 203:40
• 4Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Spring 303:00
• 5Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Summer 103:40
• 6Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Summer 204:12
• 7Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Summer 303:17
• 8Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Autumn 000:21
• 9Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Autumn 103:16
• 10Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Autumn 202:58
• 11Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Autumn 303:07
• 12Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Winter 104:32
• 13Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Winter 203:18
• 14Vivaldi, Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons: Winter 304:41
• Total Runtime43:03

Info for Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Daniel Rowland is a charismatic and adventurous violinist, director and chamber musician. With irrepressible energy, he musically intoxicates the musicians he plays with and those who listen to his performances and recordings. The members of his Stift Festival Orchestra mirror that energy and make this brilliant piece of Max Richter sound as cool, passionate, rough and intimate as it can be.

In a statement about 'Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons', Daniel declares that “it has been a huge pleasure to record these brilliantly imaginative, totally captivating and addictively energising seasons by Max Richter. I love the way the music morphs in and out of Vivaldi, using Vivaldi’s brilliantly colourful and endlessly evocative music as a springboard and inspiration for a new masterwork, brimming with electric energy and shimmering soundscapes very much of our time.”

Vivaldi's Le Quattro Stagioni (The Four Seasons) could easily be the most famous piece of classical music ever composed, one of the first examples of ‘program music’. It is in many ways a groundbreaking, radical piece - one that by its fame has, as Max Richter says, “become part of the musical landscape and a part of my daily life”. Max Richter (*1966) is London-based composer who deftly blurs the lines between the classical and electronic worlds. His ‘post-classical idiom’ draws inspiration from diverse influences. Despite discarding 75 percent of Vivaldi’s original material in his ‘Recomposed, The Four Seasons’, Max Richter considers the Italian composer’s musical DNA omni-present in his reworking of the material. Richter’s remodelled version retains the basic shape, and much of the spirit, of the master's original four violin concertos, each season about ten minutes long in total and in three movements, sequenced fast-slow-fast. Artfully, but faithfully, Richter rearranges the notes on the page, revealing anew the radiant melodies and lush timbres of the music, and transforming a piece dulled by over-familiarity into something luminously relevant to the present day.

Daniel Rowland, violin
Stift Festival Orchestra

Daniel Rowland
was born in London and grew up in the Netherlands studying with Davina van Wely and Viktor Liberman in Amsterdam and with Igor Oistrakh in Brussels as well as working intensively with Herman Krebbers, Ruggiero Ricci and Ivry Gitlis. Having won various national and international prizes, such as the "Brahms Prize" of the Brahms Society in Baden- Baden and the prestigious Oskar Back competition at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, he made his concerto debut at the Concertgebouw in 1992 performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto. This launched a busy international career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and director.

As a soloist Daniel Rowland has performed widely in venues like the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Glinka Hall in St. Petersburg, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, City Halls in Cape Town and the Gulbenkian in Lisbon, with noted conductors such as Andrei Boreiko, Djanzug Khakidze, Viktor Liberman, Lawrence Foster, Heinz Holliger, Francois Xavier Roth, Diego Masson, Lev Markiz, James Laughran and Jaap van Zweden. Apart from the core classical and romantic repertoire Daniel is an enthousiastic advocate of 20th and 21st century music with recent highlights including Berg Kammerconcert under Heinz Holliger, Saariaho's Graaltheater and Ferneyhough's Terrain with Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva as well as Berio's Sequenza at the Wigmore Hall. In 2009 his recording of the Vivaldi/Piazzolla 8 Seasons was released to critical acclaim ("to understand the meaning of fabulous, listen to these Piazzolla Seasons - Die Burger). Daniel returned to South Africa for the sixth time in October 2010 performing concertos by Tchaikowsky, Elgar and Schnittke with the orchestras of Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria, as well as making his Debut with the Johannesburg Philharmonic as a violist in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and touring the Vivaldi/Piazzolla '8 Seasons' with the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa.

A passionate chamber musician, Daniel has performed with artists as diverse as Ivry Gitlis, Polina Leschenko, Heinz Holliger, Dawn Upshaw, Alexander Lonquich, Priya Mitchell, Marcelo Nisinman, Michael Collins, Tunde Jegede, Nicolas Daniel, Alexander Baillie, Natalie Clein, Willard White and Elvis Costello. He is a frequent guest at international chamber music festivals such as Kuhmo, Stellenbosch, Trecastagni, Ljubjana, Perth, Povoa de Varzim, Osnabrück and Oxford. The Stift International Music Festival, of which he is founder and artistic director will have it's 7th edition in August 2011. The summer festival at an idyllic spot in the eastern Netherlands with concerts given in a small 14 century church with special acoustics has gathered acclaim as a festival of exceptional intimacy and intensity.

In July 2007 Rowland joined the renowned, London based Brodsky String Quartet as their new first violinist. The Brodskys have an international performing and recording schedule with concerts in Australia, Mexico, the far east and throughout Europe in '09/'10. They are the International Chamber Music Fellows at the RSAMD in Glasgow and are in residence at Cadogan Hall in London.

In demand as a soloist/director and conductor he has been invited to work with the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Camerata Scotland, the Tromsø Chamber Orchestra (Norway), the Chamber Orchestra of South Africa, the London Mozart Festival Orchestra, among many others. He is also invited as guest concertmaster by renowned orchestras such as the Philharmonia, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Russian National Orchestra - with conductors such as Muti, Pletnev, Haitink, Ashkenazy, Dohnanyi, Harnoncourt and Gergiev.

Daniel is professor of violin at the Royal College of Music in London and visiting professor at the Royal Scottisch Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow. He gives masterclasses in places as far afield as Italy, Portugal, Finland, Mexico, Hong Kong, Australia, and South Africa. His instrument is by Lorenzo Storioni, Cremona 1776.

Booklet for Richter: Recomposed: Vivaldi's Four Seasons