Vivaldi - The Four Seasons [Kennedy-English Chamber Orchestra] Well here's Nige!, no matter what anyone says about these four Concertos, congealed into possibly the most recorded Classical work of all time, and quite possibly by the best selling Classical disc of all time, i still love this work, it never gets stale for me, but this is the first time i've heard Kennedy in this work.
Nigel Kennedy is now 54!, yes what happened to that kid?, and he seems to have kept forever young by his Punk Rock dress sense, and hair style, keeping hip means keeping young, he was born in England in 1956, and recorded this work in 1986 & 1989, amazingly he was already 25 when he began to record this work, this is the 30th anniversary edition of the original disc, the front cover is a huge improvement over the old original, showing 4 black and white pictures of Kennedy, coloured in in different colours, i suppose representing the four seasons, very very nice, there's also a DVD of the whole work, but i haven't watched that yet.
The first half of the work [Spring & Summer] is fairly conventional, the second half [Autumn & Winter] have some strange effects by Kennedy, i would like to just touch on the two movements that i thought were the best,
Summer 3, represents a summer thunderstorm, with frantic strings, and different sections overlapping each other in their ferocity, and Kennedy building on this ferocity, the music develops a lovely rhythm [1:06+], with some lovely high treble solo work by Kennedy [1:30-1:43], the overlapping strings reappear like sheets of rain pelting down [2:02-2:12], ends as frantic as it started.
Winter 1, starts off with strange cold voicings, the movement represents the biting cold, a person stamping their feet to keep warm, and their teeth chattering, when the violins get going [1:15-1:27], the rapid fire violins certainly sounds like chattering teeth, and the stamping comes from the beat the violins make [2:04-2:20], and nice twangings while Kennedy plays very high treble [2:30-2:57].
A version well worth hearing.
