Glass composed the work in the summer and autumn of 2009 after several years of exchanges between him and McDuffie with the idea of creating a piece that would serve as a companion to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.
The titles of the movements therefore offer no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter might fall, with the composer welcoming other interpretations.
This concerto is now in the repertoire of the Kremerata Baltica and was played for the first time in San José, Costa Rica with Gidon Kremer as soloist in August, 2013.
[1] Michael White of the Daily Telegraph wrote the following (Cited at Richard Guerin (April 20, 2010).
Retrieved February 19, 2018.>: "Listening to Philip Glass is about as rewarding as chewing gum that’s lost its flavour, and they’re not dissimilar activites.
This new concerto is unmitigated trash: the usual strung out sequences of arpeggiated banality, driven by the rise and fall of fast-moving but still leaden triplets, and vacuously formulaic.