Although the Lancaster Festival takes place in summer, all four seasons will be in vogue this year.

Artistic Director Gary Sheldon — with a number of soloists — will take a fresh look at one of classical music’s most enduring instrumental works, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The set of four concertos, each in three movements and representing spring, summer, autumn and winter, are colorful and beloved perennials in the concert garden. They were composed for a solo violinist with string orchestra and harpsichord. Titled in Italian Le quattro stagioni, they open the composer’s set of 12 concertos, Il cimento dell’Armonia e dell’inventione ("The Contest of Harmony and Invention"), published in 1725.

A full performance of The Four Seasons lasts about an hour.

"It seemed to me like it was too much music to digest all at once," Sheldon said. "So I thought, why not really try to give each ‘season’ its own flavor?"

First, he revisited the score and the sonnets Vivaldi wrote to accompany each concerto. Dodging the big interpretive questions — namely, did Vivaldi intend these poems to be used in live performance, and if so, how? — the Lancaster Festival maestro charted his own path. He decided to split up the quartet of pieces, putting the first two on the opening half of the festival concert and the other two on the second half, and to use the sonnets in different ways as narration for each "season."

Also making the interpretation unusual will be the soloists — four violinists paired with four sets of narrators for each season. The performers:

• Spring — Veronika Affanasieva, first violinist of the Veronika String Quartet, with narrator Melinda Baker, Lancaster dancer, teacher and poet.

• Summer — Dmitri Pogorelev, Lancaster Festival artist in residence, with narrator Paul Young, principal of Lancaster’s West Elementary School.

• Autumn — Swathi Padmanabhan, the festival’s 2006 Wilkes Young Artist Fellowship recipient, with narrators Caleb Hester, Adam Walker and Rachel Withem, participants in the West "After School" Center in Lancaster.

• Winter — Michael Davis, concertmaster of the Lancaster Festival Orchestra, and narrator Boyce Lancaster, announcer and producer for WOSU-FM (89.7).

Finally, Sheldon decided to make Vivaldi the meat in a "seasonal" sandwich. Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring and Glazanov’s Autumn, from his ballet The Seasons, will open and close the concert. Or, as Sheldon said, "seasonal music by seasoned composers."

Sheldon will conduct the Lancaster Festival Chamber Orchestra, with the narrators allowed freedom in interpreting the sonnets.

"This should be great fun," Lancaster said. "(Hearing the poems will give) the audience insight into what Vivaldi was trying to say, then allow each listener’s imagination to enjoy the images created in their minds."

Sheldon said the acoustics at the venue, Faith Memorial Church, are unusually immediate and clear.

"The performance will have different artists and different voices," he added. "But Vivaldi’s music and words will be the thread throughout."

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