Antonio
VIVALDI (1678-1741)
The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) arranged Red Priest
Arcangelo CORELLI (1653-1713)
The Christmas Concerto (Concerto grosso in G minor Op. 6 No. 8 Fatto
per la Notte di Natale) arr Red Priest
DORIAN DOR 90317 [50.33]
To the cry
"Not another Four Seasons" should be added the rejoinder "Yes, but
this is Red Priest’s Four Seasons." This audacious ensemble – in my
last review I called them the Cirque du Soleil of baroque performance
groups – has recomposed the work in its own compositional image the
better, they say, to shock us into recognising in the music the sheer
novelty and drama that familiarity has long since bred out of it.
The solo line therefore goes, usually, to Piers Adams’ recorder in
various pitches, including a modern alto recorder. Because Red Priest
is a quartet they’ve abandoned the solo/tutti contrast and have gone
instead for a chamber ensemble but have varied the line to promote
sufficient contrast. The result is variously engaging, vexing and
exciting.
Fabio Biondi
and Alice Harnoncourt have in their violinistic way staked out the
ground for radical reinterpretation of the Four Seasons in a supposedly
historically informed way. Still, as we all know – or as we all should
know – today’s historically informed performance is tomorrow’s fish
and chip packet. When the first recording of the Four Seasons was
made in Rome in 1942 by an orchestra under Bernardino Molinari doubtless
they all thought it was an approximation of Vivaldian style and performance
practice. So I have no axe to grind on the question of Red Priest’s
very individual reinvention. Their performance is less a Monet than
a Jackson Pollock. Their birds in the Spring are pugnacious, the hoarse
dog as explicit as a Turner sun, the shouted "hoy" in the Pastoral
Dance a rusticity that lacks only peasant togs to complete the aural-visual
axis on which this performance is predicated.
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So, Red Priest
being the mavericks they are, the barking dog reappears – I assume
on the Franckian cyclical principle – in Summer and there the storm
breaks with Miltonic flourish. In Autumn there are hints that the
demon drink has got to the peasants even before the music has begun.
The foursome characterise everything with a vigour bordering on
mania; the hunt with its smacking great pizzicati is one instance
and – hey – what a neat touch, a fade out ending at the end of the
Allegro. Groovy.
The frost
bit so hard in Winter that I doubted there was an Imperial grain
of rosin on their baroque bows but then come the Largo and what
do we have? Why, a Calypso-reggae guitar backbeat and a curvaceous
solo violin line as sinuous and enticing as a bare foot bikini girl
on a tropical beach. Sharp ears will note that the geographical
influences extend from Club Tropicana and Barbados in a politically
inclusive way to include touches of Roby Lakatos to whom Julia Bishop
has undoubtedly been listening. If she hasn’t been listening to
him I’ll send her a cheque for £50 and my compliments. And so to
the very visualised icefalls of the concluding Allegro and a recording
at once, I have to say, simultaneously sui generis and bananas.
It seems
anti-climactic to note that the Corelli Christmas Concerto is almost
a matter of rectitude by comparison. The first Adagio is flowing
and sensitive and has a swinging Allegro section attached, the penultimate
Allegro is brisk and brilliant and the Pastorale, well, it certainly
has its share of Red Priest grotesquerie. Parental guidance stickers
should have been supplied.
Obviously
I can’t make much of a conventional recommendation given the unconventional
nature of the performances but as ever with Red Priest one is, rather
like going down to the woods, in for a big surprise.
Jonathan
Woolf
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