Joseph Haydn's oratorio The Seasons inaugurated a new chapter in the history of the genre, which had never before featured peasants, not to mention a family, as the protagonists in the drama. As the farmer Simon, his daughter Hanne, and her suitor, Lucas, all recount and reflect upon the regular events of rural life that transpire across the seasons (ploughing and sowing the fields, summer thunderstorms, the harvest, hunting, working at the spinning wheel, and so forth), Haydn never misses an opportunity to enhance the atmosphere of the text through music enriched with supreme authenticity by elements of Austrian folk song and folk dance. The end of the work comes with a moral. All of life is transient: the spring of youth is eventually followed by the autumn of old age, and then by death. Virtue alone is permanent.

Presented by: Szent István Philharmonic