Giving Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ a Touch of Jazz

“The Four Seasons,” one of the most durable compositions in the entire classical music repertoire, has been interpreted in every conceivable manner, from original Baroque instrument readings to multilayered synthesizer variations. The Antonio Vivaldi masterpiece has turned up as the foundation music for everything from modern dance choreography to television commercials (currently in a country-style travel pitch for the city of San Antonio). And it even provided the title, theme and soundtrack for the 1981 Alan Alda film of the same name.

But very few interpreters have attempted to transform the brilliant centerpiece of the work, a dazzling, but difficult violin solo written by the Italian composer to showcase his own virtuosic playing.

At least not until last year when jazz clarinetist Eddie Daniels came along, looked at the violin part and thought, “Why not try it on clarinet?”

But Daniels had even bigger game in mind. Not only would he attempt to perform the thorny violin part on clarinet, he would do so in the context of added jazz colorations via a new setting of the work arranged by composer-orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli.

“I knew,” Daniels says, “there was jazz in there somewhere, just waiting to be uncovered. When you hear a violin play jazz, it doesn’t always make it. But the clarinet has had a life in both these centuries. It was the horn for Mozart, and for a long time--with Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw--it was the horn for jazz.”

The result is “The Five Seasons,” a new Shanachie recording blending jazz passages with the atmospheric Vivaldi score, featuring Daniels performing the violin solos on clarinet with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and his quartet.

Jazz clarinetists have frequently taken a crack at classical music in the past--and vice versa. George Gershwin kicked off his “Rhapsody in Blue” with a long, swooping clarinet glissando, Benny Goodman recorded the Mozart Clarinet Concerto (and commissioned works from Copland and Bartok), Artie Shaw wrote his own clarinet concerto and Woody Herman recorded Igor Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto” (which was composed for Herman and his band). As the universally acknowledged contemporary successor to Goodman and Shaw, it’s not surprising that Daniels would also have a go at a classical piece.

Daniels’ first reaction, however, was “momentary shock” when producer Danny Weiss of Shanachie proposed a new version of the work.

But when Daniels realized what Shanachie--an innovative, New Jersey-based company dedicated to between-the-cracks recordings of jazz, blues, world and folk music--actually had in mind, “it was like two people listening to the same words and getting a totally different kind of interpretation.”

“They wanted me to take the themes of Vivaldi,” Daniels recalls, “add a string section and make a pop jazzy record. But I could never have done it that way. To me, there was never any question of doing it any way other than by being true to the original.

“The real question, I felt, was whether I could play the violin part so respectfully that when the jazz comes in, the people who don’t like jazz will like the way I play the classical passages so much that they’ll be more open to the jazz improvisations.”

Daniels succeeds on all counts. He is “true to the original” in Vivaldi’s written passages and impressively effective as a jazz improviser. That he manages to do both is testimony to his astonishing ability to move easily from the work’s brutally demanding violin segments to the flowing lyricism and surging rhythms of the improvisations.

The recording’s only shortcoming is the addition of Calandrelli’s own work, “The Fifth Season” (thus the album title), as a kind of supplement to the Vivaldi work. Stylistically out of context, the contemporary-styled movement is an unnecessary appendage to a composition that has no difficulty standing on its own.

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Daniels, 54, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., was a perfect choice for the project. A graduate of New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts, he has a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and a master’s degree from Juilliard.

His classical talents were apparent from the beginning. “Eddie Daniels,” Leonard Bernstein once remarked after he heard the young clarinetist, “combines elegance and virtuosity in a way that reminds me of Artur Rubenstein. He is a thoroughly well-bred demon.”

Daniels premiered Calandrelli’s “Concerto for Jazz Clarinet and Orchestra” in 1984, and has performed frequently over the last decade with the Boston Pops, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the London and Tokyo symphonies, as well as a variety of chamber music ensembles.

Highly active in the jazz field as well in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Daniels played with the influential Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra and has recorded with, among others, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Airto Moreira and the Mercer Ellington Orchestra.

But neither his jazz nor his classical experiences totally prepared him for dealing with the violin passages in “The Four Seasons.”

“The first time I played it,” Daniels says with a laugh, “I felt like I was being bar mitzvahed. I mean, to do the Mozart Clarinet Concerto is a given; it was written for the instrument, and it doesn’t push you beyond your limits, technically.

“But suddenly, when I had to play violin parts on the clarinet, with all these high notes and jumps and skips! Man, it was traumatic!”

Nor was Daniels’ task made any easier by the costs and procedures of recording classical music. Although he made an immediate bond with the players of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Bernard Rubenstein, there was little time to explore the new creative liaison’s full potential in the recording studio.

“Just 15 guys was so expensive,” he says, “even with the bare union rates.”

To make matters worse, Daniels had two days with the orchestra to record the entire composition--with no rehearsals.

“I’ll tell you what it was like,” he says grimly. “You have the orchestra contractor standing there with a watch saying, ‘OK, we have to take a break.’ And you say, ‘Yeah, but wait, we haven’t finished. . . .’ And he says, ‘Sorry.’ ”

The two live performances of “The Four Seasons” in March, when the work was premiered in Long Beach and Glendale, were, if anything, even more traumatic. Daniels wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to perform the entire piece “live.”

“With a recording,” he explains, “you can do one movement, you take a break, have a cup of coffee, a piece of fruit and have a chance to relax before you do another take. But to play the whole ‘Four Seasons’ on the clarinet without a break? Man, it was a gargantuan effort.”

But not one that he will hesitate to try again. Daniels loves the idea of putting jazz and classical music together and “letting them butt heads to see what happens.”

“What can I say?” he says. “I know I’ve stuck my neck out. And it’s a bit scary. It would have been a lot easier to just stick with the Mozart Concerto. But it sure wouldn’t have gotten the adrenals pumping as much.”