Pittsburgh Symphony -Andres Cardenes, conductor and violin

We had a wonderful time at Heinz Hall on October 4th, 2009. Anne Martindale Williams played the cello making Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme dance in our heads. It was breath taking and at the end everyone in the audience jumped to their feet in rounds of clapping.

The Four Seaons Op 8, Nos.1-4 made the seasons come alive. Mr. Cardenes, in his 20th and final year as Concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orhestra, not only conducted but played the violin.

To help the muscians understand the feelings they were to depect to the audienceVivaldi included at the beginning of each season a poem that corresponded closely with the music itself. Here is one of the sonnets for fall:

At the new dawn the hunters set out on the hunt

with horns, guns and dogs.

The wild beast flees, and they follow its track;

already bewildered and wearied by the great noise

of the guns and dogs,

wounded,

it threatens weakly to escape,

but overwhelmed, dies.