The last movement of Vivaldi’s Autumn: one of my favorite autumn pieces, and I’ve always found it cute.
Is it a mazurka? It’s in triple time and it bounces, so I see why it feels like one. But mazurkas didn’t reach the concert hall until Chopin, a century later. Vivaldi titled this movement La caccia, the hunt. The orchestra plays the horn calls and the solo violin runs the chase.
Vivaldi published each season with a sonnet, probably his own. This is the stanza for this movement:
The hunters set out at dawn with horns, guns and dogs. The beast flees; they follow its trail. Terrified and exhausted by the noise, wounded, it tries feebly to escape, but is cornered and dies.
My recording is Itzhak Perlman’s from 1976, leading the London Philharmonic with a full string section. Perlman tends to lead the orchestra, sometimes push it. In a hunt, that works. Period-instrument purists will object. But autumn should sound like this: layered, thick, warm. And it’s Perlman. Historically informed can wait.