Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD]

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD]

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD]
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CD Details

Composer: Antonio Vivaldi
Composer: Astor Piazzolla
Conductor: Eduardo Marturet
Orchestra: Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Super Audio CD - DSD
CD Release Date: 2009-04-14
Music Label: Ancalagon
Soundtracks:
  1. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  2. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  3. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  4. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  5. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  6. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  7. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  8. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  9. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  10. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  11. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  12. The Four Seasons (Il quattro stagione), concertos (4) for violin, strings & continuo ('Il cimento' Nos. 1-4) , Op. 8/1 - 4: Concerto
  13. Cuatro estaciónes porteñas (The Four Seasons), tango cycle: Otoño Porteño 'Autumn'
  14. Cuatro estaciónes porteñas (The Four Seasons), tango cycle: Invierno Porteño 'Winter'
  15. Cuatro estaciónes porteñas (The Four Seasons), tango cycle: Primavera Porteña 'Spring'
  16. Cuatro estaciónes porteñas (The Four Seasons), tango cycle: Verano Porteño 'Summer'

Music reviews of Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD]

Music Review: Lara St. John, SimonBYSO: Vivaldi 4 Seasons, Piazolla 4 Seasons of Buenos Aires: Sick, Off Da Hook, Slammin, Jammin, Bammin
Rating: 5 Stars

Okay, blame my title on the hip-hop affected nieces and nephews who are always trying to get that old guy to update. A more sedate summary? Well - Fresh, Frisky, Finessed, and Feeling Fine?

Fact is, we have no dearth of very well played Vivaldi Four Seasons concertos in our current catalog. You could pick your favorite violin soloist in the effective era of recorded arts, past or present; then you could probably find his or her recording. Add in the softer margins of the resale business, and indeed we do have plentiful choices. Yet another?

Well. Let me be slow to say this: Yes.

I'm kidding, right? Well. No.

The Simon Bolivar Youth Symphony Orchestra is the star ensemble of what Venezuelans simply tag, El Sistema. The System. It was devised nearly single-handedly by Veneuela's maestro Economist, Jose Antonio Abreu. This amazing feat of South American creativity helps lift innumerable Venezuelan youth out of poverty and violence, by getting them to learn how to play music. A crazy idea to most of the western world, and probably not the first thing that comes to mind for any global economist pondering his or her next academic publication? To say the least.

Yet it works. As the star ensemble, the SBYSO really now constitutes one of the great orchestras of the Spanish speaking planet. At first this band was welcome, almost as a recognition of impossibly good deeds done. Lifting children out of the dangerous mix of drug cartels and poverty and violence. All that. Yet, a few discs have been published now, and so we come to the popular heart beat of the classical catalog, Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Piazolla's smaller-sized musical suite, Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, fills out the disc. And all is captured in detailed, vivid, multiple channel surround sound, high resolution super audio. (Are we now hoping the SACD format will survive, with the recent introduction of BlueRay high resolution audio?)

The disc booklet says that our venue is the Sala Simon Boliver, Centro de Accion Social por La Music in Caracas, Venezuela. It gathers the sound of the players very nicely, and cradles the reading in just the right amount of hall resonance without losing the finesse and the detail of the instruments involved, especially again those youth player strings.

Kudos to veteran recording producer, Martha De Francisco. She used to work for Phillips Classics, (Polygram, Universal Classics), now transmogrified into an independent outfit called Pentatone. She teaches recording arts and sciences at Canada's McGill University. From the solid gold achievement on this disc, she's the real deal. Lucky recording arts students.

The band has been reduced to chamber proportions. Six first and second violins. Four violas and cellos. Two basses. And ensemble member Bruno Procopio on harpsichord.

The headlong forward motion of the faster sections will not necessarily surprise any listener who has already heard the third or fourth generations of period instrument readings. Bands like Il Giardino Armonico have already laid down explosive musical markers for taking a less than somnolent approach to these famous string concertos. And other groups like Sejon have already showed how that vigor transfers to modern strings. Lara St. John and the band stand bright in this lineage. This isn't your grandfather's slow, heavy cycle, beautifully played by a big band leader with a famous violinist on solo fiddle, as may have been.

As with other discs, a listener's thumbs up or down may turn on the fiddle soloist. Here we have Lara St. John. She's just who she is. Sorta young, sorta maverick, but a real deal player nonetheless. If I had to pigeon-hole her current style, God forbid, I'd probably say that she sometimes comes across like a young Nigel Kennedy - wanting to get western classical music out of its social and economic boxes without undoing the brilliance and beauty and bounty of the music as fine art.

It helps that Ms. St. John is playing a good fiddle. She has loaned use of a sterling, 1779 Guadagnini, nicknamed 'Salabue". She aims to join the great host of solo players who have taken these four concertos to heart. She knows her instrument, and immerses herself in the music, and digs into things with great color, gusto, and point. Her playing is individualized, and that may put traditionalists off; though I dare anybody to stand too hard and fast in saying that this familiar music cannot sustain her approach.

Writing this, I noted that the existing reviewers are split, high to low. One is praising, one giving this disc the lowest marks possible, disappointed. I'm up there with the praise.

Also newly released, Gidon Kremer and Camerata Baltica are strongly praised by nearly every reviewer. I don't doubt their excellence; but for me, their disc falls down on the sequencing, with a concerto Vivaldi intermixed with successive Piazolla. Truth is, I'm not all that convinced that Vivaldi and Piazolla belong together, despite their shared references to the four seasons theme. And despite Piazolla actually quoting Vivaldi at the close of his work. If I'm going to have them together on the same disc, I think I greatly prefer having each piece of music, intact, as itself.

Eight other super audio versions of these concertos are available, and so far as I know, no disc has poor sound or markedly poor playing. Soloists range - from traditionalists like Joseph Silverstein (Telarc, DSD Soundstream), Isaac Stern (Sony), Massimo Quarta (Delos); to strong period instrumentalists like Dan Laurin (BIS), Christina Day Martinson (Boston Baroque, Telarc), Stefano Montanari (Byzantine Academy, Arts Music). Janine Jansen is my most recent high pick from the super audio bunch; though I do have a couple of others, too. I do love Jansen's heightened polish and sophistication, a likely polar opposite from the gusty, risk-taking immersion that you will hear on this disc from St. John and the Venezuelans. In red book mastering, I've long cherished Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi, if you can still find it.

The Piazolla comes across to me, still, as a dance-inspired work. The music does as good a job as any of Piazolla's other pieces, lifting Tango into higher realms. The Buenos Aires Four Seasons are altogether hotter, breezier, and less cloistered than the Vivaldi concertos. We are in the street, at the cafe, in the open air green parks, sitting by the rivers, going to clubs, hanging out. The hip-hop slam and slouch serves Piazolla deeply and well in these readings. While you have plenty of choices in the Vivaldi, this reading may likely end up a preferred version of the Piazolla, interpretation stars plus sound stars.

Our Conductor of Record is Arturo Marturet, and despite being older and arguably, more venerable in classical music circles; he manages to keep up with the young folks, and then some. He's much appreciated for not having to damp down such youthful spirits.

So that's it, Interpretation Stars, Sound Stars - all for this lively, gutsy, risk-taking reading.
More Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD] free music reviews:
1

Description of Vivaldi: The Four Seasons; Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires [Hybrid SACD]

"Something of a phenomenon." -- The Strad

Drawing from two sides of the musical spectrum--Tango and Baroque--comes Lara St. John's newest recording, featuring the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Eduardo Marturet. The disc features Vivaldi's seminal work, the Four Seasons, which is the top-selling classical work of all time, paired with The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, Astor Piazzola's tribute to Vivaldi. There is tremendous interest in this orchestra, and this is the first time it has recorded with the Ancalagon label following successful recordings with the Deutsche Grammophon label.

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