Customer Reviews

Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons [Complete]

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Hello, Listener. With this CD you enter an incredible world of living music.

I watched this performance televised in Scotland in 1993. Kennedy was absolutely impeccable, funny, and wildly eccentric. During the summer section, the floor lights were turned up brightly so that all the performers, except Kennedy, wore sunglasses. It was a spectacle. You felt the chills going up your spine during the violent waves of the (musical) heat as Kennedy seemed to attack his violin. Kennedy is asthmatic, and described his interpretation of Vivaldi's summer as focusing on "the anger of the heat, the violence of the heat". Then Kennedy (tongue-in-cheek) described his autumn interpretation as a perception that the mushroom is not only a psychedelic substance, but also that Vivaldi had in mind foresight of the terrror of the first atomic bomb explosion.

An unconventional interpretation, but certainly the best I've ever heard of this classic.

If hearing The Four Seasons by Vivaldi make you groan for something new, you ought to give this recording a chance. Performed and directed by Kennedy, this album is a surprising piece of art. The fast movements are driven and powerfully exhilarating while the luscious slow movements provide the perfect contrast. Throughout the recording Kennedy adds the necessary touches that make this a well developed art project: exciting embelishments befitting the piece and composer, cadenzas (some of his own) that add to the flow of the movements, and a steady stream of passion that captivates the ear. Instilled with feeling, this recording of the much over-played Four Seasons leaves the listener looking for more from Nigel Kennedy.

This interpretation of the four seasons is quite "different" from the standard interpretation.Nigel Kennedy has added his personal touch giving the music a completely refreshed aspect.The dominating character of Kennedy's violin gives out the appropriate tension in movements like the Presto from "L'estate" or the allegro from "L'inverno".His interpretation is frantic,filling the listener with energy and vigor.And at movements like the adagio from "L'estate" the listener comes across a tender and delicate violin.This CD defiantly deserves a place at your CD collection.

Every performance is editing the original. This edition makes many sleepy versions obsolete. This is more like the Four Seasons should be played, passionate. Not as if Vivaldi was some bored aristocrat with nothing else to do but like he probably was: loving music. My taste in orchestral music is more like Frank Zappa and Edgard Varese. Yet if more classical music was played like this, Vivaldi would get some company on my shelves.

You will fall in love with the violin after hearing Kennedy. His passion is felt in the sound of every string. Inspiring and beautiful!

Antonio Vivaldi was a priest, what's more a red-haired one, i.e. quite a marginal in this field of non-religious music, and his music was mostly composed for the orchestra of a young girls' religious school. And yet he is sublime to the most extreme point with conception, with understanding, with passionate comprehension. So that the English Chamber Orchestra here is by far too massive and muscular to satisfy the desire that makes us crave for finesse, delicacy, hues, nuances, shades, etc. And the only shades are those the musicians put over their eyes to impose a filter onto the music, the filter of technical perfection to the expense of emotional expressivity. So these Four Seasons are just perfect, well read, but they are rendered homogeneously, Easter in December and July in Winter. And that is of course regrettable. A little bit more personal temperament would give this music a charm it cannot have when the temper of perfection is trying to make it absolutely right. I would have preferred the vision of an erring pilgrim through the four seasons of his pilgrimage to that of a trip down the road in a vehicle that is so well pruned that nothing protrudes at all anywhere. Could we speak of aerodynamic music?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

After reading the reviews for this performance, I decided to do something I often don't and write a review.
Nigel Kennedy is as many know a wild musician, a force of nature. I have been listening to Vivaldi since I was a child, as I danced ballet until my late teens. I always liked Vivaldi, but until I listened to Nigel performing The Four Seasons I would have never catalogued Vivaldi as an exciting composer. Nigel brings new life and new force to this piece, and his performance is charged with the very essence of each season. His changes of speed and intensity in his performance make it something personal and compelling. If you have the Four Seasons already, I still highly recommend listening to this version and listening hard. If you are a classical music purist, this might not appeal to you but to me this brings a new humanity to Vivaldi.

Mr. Kennedys interpretation of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" is unique, yet thrilling. He has an energy and capacity exhibited by few others. I feel personally this is one of the best recordings I own, and would highly recommend it to anyone who would enjoy an energetic twist to a well known classical masterpiece.

I cannot say enough about Nigel Kennedy. I have never been a fan of violin. That was until I heard Mr. Kennedy perform on this CD. The English Chamber Orchestra is outstanding also. They seem to play with such deep feeling. You will enjoy this CD. Thanks, Jim G. 37 yr. old male Chicago ,IL

No doubt, a masterpice like Kennedy's interpretation of "The four Seasons" is unique. I first had the chance to hear this a little after the CD was released several years ago and I was so trilled by the way Nigel Kennedy was able to add something of his own to a very conservative baroque work.