Vivaldi's "Winter" from "The Four Seasons"

Anyone who knows how my tentative affection for winter and snow has received a setback by recent events will appreciate my tongue in cheek presentation of the title piece below. Still, the music is beautiful and the accompanying performance is very interesting... impressive, really.

Vivaldi composed this set of four string concertos in 1723. You can also check out "Spring," "Summer," and "Autumn," with accompanying sand art in like manner. Sand art, coincidentally, seems to be big in Eastern Europe. There are a bunch of YouTube posts. A very good one that I have seen, that is really very moving, is embedded below. It tells a beautiful story by means of images that each surpass even a thousand words. The rhythm and grace with which Kseniya Simonova, a Ukrainian, performs her sand art adds an entire dimension to her work.




The same piece can be found in smaller segments with a somewhat better sound quality, but I wanted to provide the whole performance as a single piece to give a better feel. The same performer also has a sand art performance that tells the story of the Ukraine before, during, and after the calamities of World War II and Stalin. I do not know enough about the culture and sufferings of that people during the middle of the twentieth century to understand exactly what many of the images mean to them as they watch it, but watching it myself, I was moved, and further moved by how moved the audience was by Simonova's work.