Timișoara, the western Romania city that is this year one of the holders of the European Capital of Culture title, has taken its place on the map of the cities with a local variation of The Uncertain Four Season as the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) performed a dedicated re-working by Italian composer Carmen Fizzarotti as part of its Earth4All Spring 2023 tour.

The Uncertain Four Seasons is a global project that sees Vivaldi's The Four Seasons reimagined to offer a sound depiction of what climate might look like if no action to reduce biodiversity loss is taken. Data scientists, composers, developers and musicians worked on updating Vivaldi's 1725 work for the year 2050, using climate modelling data from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report's 'RCP 8.5' future scenario, which assumes no concerted global effort to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.

The project is an initiative of agencies AKQA and Jung von Matt, composer Hugh Crosthwaite, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub. The project builds on a concept first performed by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in 2019.

The mid-May concert in Timișoara, with violinist Daniel Rowland as soloist and conductor, was part of EUYO's Earth4All Spring 2023 tour, which took the orchestra to Lusławice (Poland), Belgrade (Serbia), Skopje (North Macedonia), Priština (Kosovo), and Thessaloniki (Greece). For the tour, which tackled the themes of democracy and climate change, EUYO partnered with both The Uncertain Four Season and Earth4All, an international initiative to accelerate the change needed "for an equitable future on a finite planet."

"The way this project started was [that] a group of scientists developed an algorithm for geospatial data to show what changes might be expected in each city and place in the world if we don't reverse biodiversity loss. They started with this computer program, and then they brought in some composers to work with them. They made a number of scores for all of these places. Then, if you wanted, you could have your own composer to work on that further. So that's what we did," Marshall Marcus, EUYO Secretary General, explained after the concert in Timișoara.

In the case of Timișoara, the chosen season was fall, and Italian composer Carmen Fizzarotti worked on developing a version for the city.

"We gave Carmen Fizzarotti the data and the score which was generated, and she did her own research. She researched in each city, which is portrayed in our version, what might happen to the weather, what might happen to the climate in these cities. And from that, she did a version which was a new one for each city. It's a very interesting project which brings scientists and artists together. We did this, for example, last year on the island of Delos in Greece."

Delos, a UNESCO Heritage site, hosted the EUYO in May 2022 for a concert designed to highlight "the uncertainty about the future of the planet if we do not act urgently." It was also part of EUYO's 2022 Peace in Europe project, which included seven peace concerts across Europe.   

As for the spring tour, it was also an opportunity for the orchestra to walk the talk as it travelled by road only, despite the logistical challenge involved in having musicians from 27 countries. The musicians, the staff, the instruments, and all other equipment were transported by coach. "I think it's the first tour since I've been with the orchestra, which is ten and a half years now, where from the beginning in Lusławice in Poland, down to Thessaloniki in Greece, it's all by road," Marcus explained. "You can't play a piece about climate change and not be thinking about what you're doing to the environment."

Next, the EUYO will start its summer tour, where the orchestra will perform with Martin James Bartlett, Julia Fischer, Benjamin Grosvenor, Manfred Honeck and Sir Antonio Pappano, with two programs of symphonic repertoire. Chamber music events, late-night sessions, and EUYO's Bolzano Spazio Klassik initiative are also part of the project. More details are available here.

Carmen Fizzarotti explains the compositional concept for the Uncertain Four Seasons here.

More on the upcoming events hosted by the Banatul Philharmonic in Timișoara here.

simona@romania-insider.com