The piece
Spring opens The Four Seasons, the first four violin concertos of the collection Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, published in Amsterdam in 1725. Each concerto follows a sonnet; here, “spring has come”: the whole orchestra plays a joyful ritornello, each phrase repeated as an echo, before the solo violin imitates the song of the birds. This easy version, written for Noctave after the 1725 edition, keeps the whole opening ritornello, in E major, Vivaldi's key.
The right hand plays the tune an octave lower, without its two trills; the left hand plays the cello's bass, nearly always an E on each beat. Follow the dynamics: each phrase is played loud, then repeated softly, like an echo (bars 4 and 10). In bars 3 and 6, the left hand climbs by semitones up to the B: keep its eighths perfectly even under the tune.
