Live at BBC Proms: Joshua Bell directs the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and Astor Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Presented by Penny Gore.

Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
Astor Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (arr. Leonid Desyatnikov)

Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Joshua Bell (director/violin)

From an icy Italian winter to the heady, sensual warmth of a South American summer: violinist Joshua Bell leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on a musical journey through the sights and sounds of two continents and four very different seasons. Inspired by Vivaldi’s best-known work, Piazzolla – Argentina’s 20th-century tango king, whose 100th anniversary we celebrate this year – created his own response, complete with musical quotations. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic concertos celebrate contrast – the freshness of spring, with its sudden thunderstorms, versus the languid heat of summer – Piazzolla’s musical landscape remains more constant, always swaying to the pervasive rhythm of the tango.