Do you like Vivaldi beyond the Four Seasons?

Antonio Vivaldi wrote more than 500 concertos. Today, most people know four of them. But those four — commonly known as “The Four Seasons” — have become part of our cultural fabric. They may not even be his best concertos, but they’re ubiquitous. Even if you don’t know classical music, or think you know them, you’ve heard “The Four Seasons” — in movie soundtracks, on TV ads or playing on Muzak loops.
Everyone who loves art has known the impulse to enter into a piece: to memorize the poem, to want to buy the painting, to grasp some element of the work so it will never be lost. But it isn’t only sheer love of the music that inspires contemporary artists to emulate it. It also has to do with packaging. “The Four Seasons” is a tour de force for a violin soloist — Vivaldi himself was a mean violinist whose improvisation awed one observer who felt that “such has not been nor ever can be played.” Violinists are eager for other works that can offer the same kind of plum showpiece.