VIVALDI - THE FOUR SEASONS

RED PRIEST

Red Priest’s recording of the Four Seasons was perhaps the defining moment in the group’s career.   With this groundbreaking interpretation of Vivaldi’s much-loved classic Red Priest truly burst onto the international scene, and attracted rave reviews worldwide. Even the generally conservative Gramophone Magazine included it in their top four all-time recordings of the work, stating “there’s nothing like their blend of virtuosity and mahem. This is The Four Seasons like you’ve never heard it before”. If you buy no other Red Priest recording you should own this one!

"Red Priest is a group of very intelligent period instrument specialists with a red-hot wicked sense of humor... who irreverently and intelligently deconstruct these war horses and provide the listener an experience as fresh as a spring strawberry bursting on the roof of your mouth... A splendid baroque gift that will be praised as visionary and heretical in the same breath... Good show!"  ALL ABOUT JAZZ  Read whole review

"This is a performance that the major labels have been striving to achieve (and failing miserably to accomplish): attempting to cross the classics with modern sensibilities. Red Priest plays this music with a sense of verve and élan, and, in the process, has created a true crossover recording." SOUNDSTAGE  Read whole review

"If you think you know the Seasons, if you’ve heard it (or played it) far too often to ever want to hear it again – go straight out and buy this recording. Red Priest’s performance on this disc is passionate but criminal, drunken and disorderly, manic and demonic, outrageous yet compulsive…. This stuff is cheaper than cocaine, but there’s no way it should be legal."
EARLY MUSIC TODAY Read whole review

"Sensational ... Completely wild and deeply imaginative, the album marries the work to the spirit of baroque spectacle and Venetian skulduggery." MUSIC WEEK 

"Startlingly fertile imagination ... enormously entertaining while genuinely capable of saying something about the music... Red Priest are having fun with these old favorites, but it is unpretentious fun, and, most importantly, it is dished up by people who know how this music works, and whose affection for the subject of their witty and anarchic fooling is never in doubt." GRAMOPHONE Read whole review

"Extends the very limits of virtuosity ... for sheer imagination it's unbeatable"
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE  Read whole review

"This new version of The Four Seasons will certainly open your mind ... like it or loathe it (I'm firmly of the former camp, I'm slightly embarrased to say!), it's all great fun."
EARLY MUSIC REVIEW  Read whole review

"A wholly irreverent and highly enlightened approach to the piece we all love to hate ... Red Priest puts the viva in Vivaldi."
STRINGS MAGAZINE  Read whole review

"You gotta hear this... It's a depraved taste. But I do think it a highly creative curiosity and a must-have... no-one else has quite done this with the much-abused Four Seasons." AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE Read whole review

"Red Priest, the notorious British quartet of wags and mischief-makers, the Spike Joneses of the Baroque ... consists of serious musicians who perform with great skill ... Parts of it are quite lovely, other parts completely exciting. This is an album that rises above its qualities of novelty."  GO MEMPHIS  Read whole review

"Engaging, vexing and exciting ... Their performance is less a Monet than a Jackson Pollock ... as ever with Red Priest one is, rather like going down to the woods, in for a big surprise."  MUSIC WEB  Read whole review

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