Search - Antonio Vivaldi, Nicholas Kraemer, Monica Huggett :: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons · 4 Concertos, op. 8 / Huggett · Raglan Baroque Players · N. Kraemer

One of the best, if not THE best, period instrument Vivaldi

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 04/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although it is the major companies' stars (Anne-Sophie Mutter, Nigel Kennedy) who have made the running with Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", the real developments have been in the area of "period instrument" performance. It was Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Vienna that started it all in 1977 with a version that sounded very different - and anything but beautiful, with barking violas taking precedence over tunefulness (i.e. the programme behind the music was developed in full). There followed some excellent recordings by The English Concert/Simon Standage and The Academy of Ancient Music, then came this 1988/89 version by Monica Huggett and the Raglan Baroque Players, a group which consists of mostly female period instrument musicians and had already made a respectable recording of Vivaldi's "La Cetra". The playing on this recording is rapturously beautiful, with Monica Huggett really showing what she can do on her copy of an Amati. The distribution is fairly traditional, with 9 first and 9 second violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, a violone, a lute and a harpsichord. The sound is, indeed, soft and, I felt, almost feminine, but it reflects a truly musical attitude to Vivaldi, and I found both the Four Seasons and the other Concertos here to be eminently satisfying. - In comparison with the 1994 recording by the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca on Divox Antiqua, considered by many to be the ultimate Four Seasons, I think the Huggett/Kraemer comes off quite well; the Sonatori play with one instrument to a part, except for having three violins in the tutti, which yields a very transparent sound, and Guiliano Carmignola is a great period violinist as soloist. But if there is little to choose between the two recordings quality-wise on the Four Seasons, I think the Huggett/Kraemer wins out by having four other concertos from Op. 8 as an "encore" whereas the Sonatori have just two string concerti that don't really match up to the main work here."