Vivaldi: Four Seasons; Concertos for two violins, strings, and continuo.(Sound Recording Review)

Vivaldi: Four Seasons; Concertos for two violins, strings, and continuo. Nigel Kennedy, members of the Berlin Philharmonic. EMI 7243 5 57666-0-1.

Quoting from the booklet note, "No living musician has done more to revitalize Antonio Vivaldi's status than Nigel Kennedy--who has brought unimaginable sales of his work to every corner of the world." Certainly, Mr. Kennedy has sold a lot of CDs of his earlier "Four Seasons," but to hear the PR department talk, you'd think nobody else had ever recorded the work. It is this kind of hyperbole that permeates the entire present album.

Where before he had the English Chamber Orchestra to accompany him, Kennedy now has members of the Berlin Philharmonic behind him, and apparently starting with the "Four Seasons" they intend to record as much Vivaldi as the public will stand. It's a daunting enterprise, and I wish him well, although the public may soon find itself exhausted with Vivaldi overload.

In any case, Kennedy is a magnificent violinist with a bravura talent, which, unfortunately, sometimes gets in the way of the music. Listeners to these new "Four Seasons" interpretations will find them either delightfully fanciful and innovative or annoyingly self-conscious. I'm afraid I'm of the latter group. Kennedy invests each movement with so many subjective trills and frills and stops and changes of tempo that one feels the head spinning. Some of it, frankly, is just plain bizarre.

I rather expect Kennedy approaches his music here in the ...