NIGHTMARE IN
VENICE
Dorian
DOR-90305
Classical
Music With A Sense Of Humor, Part II
Priest on the Run was the Baroque quartet Red Priest's first recording
for Dorian, released in the late 1990s. It was a thematic affair based
on Antonio Vivaldi's flight from Venice at the time the composer was
going abroad, assembled from the pens of the finest composers of the
Baroque era. For the present compilation, Red Priest turns its attention
to the spooky, the frightening, the downright scary. Nightmare in Venice
is a deliciously Baroque Halloween-fest if there ever was one. Replete
with hissing and catcalls, this disc is a chiller.
Image is not everything, though Red Priest has that quality in spades.
This is a quartet of the best Baroque specialists the United Kingdom
has to offer. Although Red Priest was praised by Gramophone Magazine,
the group also received criticism for basically not being serious. That
seems to be precisely the point. Classical music has ceased being fun
(presuming that it ever was fun to begin with).
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What Red
Priest has done is to market itself brilliantly to the young and educated
crowd able to recognize not only their musical brilliance, but their
promotional brilliance as well. Nightmare in Venice is splendid for
no other reason than it brings together the more gothic compositions
of all of the greatest composers of an artistic and philosophic era.
Much of the music presented here looks forward towards Romanticism,
skipping classicism altogether.
After hearing Priest on the Run, I thought to myself, "I hope
these guys never record The Four Seasons one more time." But
times has passed, and at this point I cannot wait to hear their Seasons.
I suspect it will be a greater kick in the pants than Il Giardino
Armonico (Electra/Asylum 1998). Red Priest is currently on tour delivering
the Seasons in a way only they can-with grace, panache, and cojones
this BIG.
~ C. Michael Bailey
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