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.
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
Red Priest - Piers Adams (recorders) Julia
Bishop (violin) Angela East (cello) and Howard
Beach (harpsichord) 