Vivaldi meets John Wick: A pop culture guide to concertos
Editor’s note: Classical music of any kind often feels boring and inaccessible. That’s why we asked Harini Calamur to do her series on Hindustani music. Many of you asked for a similar pop culture guide to Western classical music—which has shaped movie soundtracks and top 40 hits alike. From your lips to our ears—here’s the second instalment penned by veteran music writer Narendra Kusnur. As always, we’ve put all the music referenced in the article in a YouTube playlist for you to enjoy.
Written by: Narendra Kusnur has been a music journalist for over 40 years—including a decade-long stint covering the beat at the Mid-Day newspaper. He currently writes for The Hindu, Free Press Journal, Hindustan Times and Rolling Stone India, besides the in-house magazines of prestigious institutions such as NCPA and Shanmukhananda Hall.
Over to Naren…
Enter any hotel lobby, airport lounge or wait on hold over a customer service call—you’re bound to hear Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ playing ad infinitum with its sweeping string section and soft melody. It consists of four violin concertos, titled ‘Spring’, ‘Summer’, ‘Autumn’ and ‘Winter’. Often, to establish a high-class setting—the opening ‘Allegro’ movement of ‘Spring’ has been used in Hollywood movies like ‘Pretty Woman’ (1990), ‘Flubber’ (1997) and ‘The Fantastic Four’ (2015).
Watch the Maestro Ashot Tigranyan perform Vivaldi’s instantly recognisable ‘Spring, 1st Movement’ with his Classical Concert Chamber Orchestra below:
More recently, it was used in Netflix’s beloved baroque period drama ‘Bridgerton’ recomposed by Max Richter—for a romantic last dance scene—replete with rain, candles, confession of love—and of course, ball gowns. There’s even a metal interpretation of the tune by Canadian musician Yves Custeau, which you can headbang to.
There have been new pieces of music where Vivaldi’s concertos have been improvised into completely novel compositions, with Singapore-born British violinist Vanessa-Mae doing an improvisation of ‘Summer’ in her piece Storm, symphonic rock band Trans Siberian Express using ‘Winter’ in its song ‘Dreams Of Fireflies (On A Christmas Night)’ and the film ‘John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum’ using a remix of ‘Winter’ in an action scene at a hotel in New York.
Here is a video of the original Presto (very fast) movement of ‘Summer’ as composed by Vivaldi:
Feel free to compare it with Vanessa Mae’s adaptation called ‘Storm’:
Vivaldi was one of the early composers who successfully created concertos in the 1720s. His contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach also composed a number of concertos—a notable one being the Concerto For Two Violins. Then there’s also the Brandenburg Concertos and the Concertos For Harpsichord—which is composed for a quaint early keyboard instrument. Here is a live performance of the Concerto for Two Violins by Arve Tellefsen of Norway and Indian maestro L Subramaniam—as both Tellefsen and Subramaniam serenade you with the violin:
Back to basics: What is a concerto?
As described in last month’s column, a symphony is a piece for a large orchestra, where each musician has a specific role. A concerto, in comparison, is written with more prominence to a soloist or small group of soloists. For instance, a piano concerto will have specific solo passages for the pianist. The word concerto is derived from the Italian word for ‘agreement’ as the soloist matches his parts with the rest of the orchestra.
On stage, the soloist is positioned near the conductor. The piece often consists of three movements—fast, slow and very fast/ lively—unlike the symphony, which normally has four movements. A variant of the concerto is the ‘Concerto Grosso’, or grand concerto, where two violinists, viola and cello have individual roles. Its best-known practitioner was German-British composer George Frideric Handel, a contemporary of Bach and Vivaldi who wrote 12 such pieces. Here’s a clip from the opening piece of Handel’s ‘Concerto Op 6 No 1':
Concertos and cinema
So far, we have stuck to concertos composed by Baroque composers in the first half of the 18th century. The periods after that, known as the Classical and Romantic eras, saw the rise of the concerto. Austrian composer Joseph Haydn wrote concertos for various instruments—from violin and violoncello—to trumpet, flute and oboe. Mozart wrote 27 concertos for piano alone, besides famous ones for clarinet and flute. Beethoven wrote five piano concertos and one Violin Concerto that is often used in shows.
The Academy Awards sweeping masterpiece—‘The King’s Speech’—used Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 Movement 2 as part of an epilogue scene right after Colin Firth as the titular king triumphs in the execution of the challenging speech that is the subject of the film—just before they roll the credits. Listen to the concerto from the film’s soundtrack below.
Mozart’s 1984 biopic ‘Amadeus’ uses his Piano Concerto No 22 Movement 3—in a scene shot in the Imperial Gardens of Vienna—as the eponymous composer conducts his orchestra. Take a look at the scene from the film below.
Mozart’s clarinet concertos have also been used in iconic films—such as in the background of the 1985 Robert Redford-Meryl Streep starrer ‘Out Of Africa’ using his slower section (Adagio). Listen to the concerto below.
Among other composers, the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto was used in the 2007 Daniel Day-Lewis movie ‘There Will Be Blood’—at the insistence of alternative rock band Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood who curated the music for the film. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 3 found a place in the 1996 movie ‘Shine’—a real-life story based on how pianist David Helfgott suffered a mental breakdown.
There was also the 1980 musical drama ‘The Competition’—that used piano concertos by Brahms, Chopin, Beethoven and Sergei Prokofiev fittingly—as the film chronicles a competition between a disillusioned pianist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) and an upcoming talent (Amy Irving). The concertos were selected by the film’s music director Lalo Schifrin, who was accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Watch Amy Irving in a scene performing a Prokofiev rendition:
Though the occurrences are less common—there have been instances where concertos have been used in pop songs. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No 2 was used as inspiration for the Frank Sinatra song ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms’. The piano melodies also were adapted in Eric Carmen’s 1975 hit ‘All By Myself’—later covered and further popularised by Celine Dion who retained the original structure but added her own nuances on the higher register.
Watch a rendition of Rachmaninoff’s original concerto below:
And here is Sinatra’s take on the same:
The following video compares Rachmaninoff’s creation with Carmen’s song:
