Interpreti Veneziani – Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Live@San Vidal

I took this photograph in the interval just after the final piece had ended. The applause was still fading, and the musicians were easing out of performance mode and back into themselves. That is the moment I am often most drawn to—the release, the unguarded shift from concentration to relief or quiet joy.
The setting, a church repurposed as a concert hall, carries more visual weight than any backdrop strictly needs. Marble columns, religious statuary, painted altarpieces: all of it suggests solemnity and grandeur. Yet the mood between the musicians is light. The double bassist is smiling, bow loosely held, posture relaxed. The cellist has already turned slightly away, the intensity of previous focus still lingering in his shoulders. The contrast between environment and gesture is what interested me.
From a technical standpoint, the lighting was difficult. Stage lighting in such spaces tends to be directional and warm, casting deep shadows while picking out skin and wood in uneven highlights. I worked handheld at a relatively open aperture, which introduces a shallow depth of field. The focus falls primarily on the bassist’s face and instrument; the rest softens as it recedes. The softness is appropriate to the moment—it doesn’t need clinical sharpness.

Compositionally, the image is built from vertical lines—the instruments, the statue, the architectural columns—and the subtle diagonals of the bows. The figures are off-centre, allowing space for the surroundings to inform the atmosphere without overwhelming the interaction. The statue in the background appears to look on, coincidentally echoing the posture of the musicians. This wasn’t staged, but the alignment felt right when I pressed the shutter.
Some might say the background is busy, that there is too much to take in. But the performance itself happened within this layered space. To simplify it excessively would have misrepresented the experience. The ornate environment, the instruments’ polished wood, the informal moment of shared relief—they all belong to the same frame.