The Four Seasons (Harp Consort, Freiburger Barockorchester)

I'm a violin freshman at Eastman School of Music, and in spite of (or more likely because of) my apalling lack of music-history-knowledge, this cd completely revolutionized the way I think and feel about baroque performance practice, "period instrument" recordings in general, and the 4 Seasons in particular.

In case you haven't noticed, there are a WHOLE LOT of 4 Seasons out there; what sets this recording apart, at least at first glance, would its unusual instrumentation, but what really makes it addictive (as well as head-turningly fresh and exciting even to someone who has heard and played the piece until it oozes out their ears!) is its daring to take the meaning of the music and its expression beyond the boundaries of lazy musical imaginations and the stunted creativity of modern score-dependent orchestras. In other words, when the music should be light they play stacatissimo; when it should be heavy they attain a pesante that Mahler would call barbarous. Their loud parts rival anything amplified instruments could conceive, while the soft parts are barely audible. They are completely uninhibited by any kind of unspoken dictum that one can be only so expressive and still be in good taste. And what changed my life was the fact that you're ALLOWED to play Vivaldi this way! It would be excessive in Brahms, but it's actually historical and even desirable!

Okay--now that I'm done babbling exuberantly about the principles that make this recording different, for the technicalities. There are far more than the usual five string instruments represented on this disc. The consort rests on the premise of using the instrumentation that would have accompanied a Vivaldi opera or cantata, since the Seasons are programatic (via the explanatory sonnets that Vivaldi himself wrote as a sort of program notes for a world unaccustomed to programatic music without voice) and lyrical, with movements more like arias than concerti (e.g. the Largo in Winter). This means that the rennaissance "violin band" of violin through "bass violin" is joined by members of several other kinds of "bands"--lute quartets, guitar ensembles, and harp consorts--each of which was associated with a particular mood, setting, and theme (lyrical, festive, pastoral, grotesque). In opera, these instruments often populated the continuo part in addition to the harpsichord we usually hear today.

The addition of instruments such as harp, cittern, guitar, theorbo, and regale has two effects. One, as intended, is that they give the consort greater textural freedom to express these varying ideas by using the appropriate instruments in the appriate places. The other effect is that the orchestra gains a percussive, spine-tingling, speaker-blowing power that sends the watery, insipid, gut-stringed memories responsible for your involuntary tic at the words "period instruments" to a happy oblivion.

I think my approval is clear by now, but I can't end this ridiculously long rant without mentioning the absolutely stomach-turning virtuosity with which the soloist sears through the runs. Not with modern neatness or refinement, but with an unrestrained enthusiasm that sounds, as it is, not that far removed from its ancestors, the fiddling of folk and dance music, and the lightning "virtuosity" of jigs and reels.

Put all that together, and this is not only the best 4 Seasons I've heard, it's the best of the (admitedly few) baroque recordings I've heard.