It’s an interesting experiment because the organ contains so many sounds – bird-like high notes, solid supportive low notes. In this arrangement of the concerto for organ and trumpet, the organ plays all the parts – both orchestra and soloist. Allegro (Bolette Roed, recorder Arte dei Suonatori) All of a sudden, we hear more birds, more different kinds of than we may have heard before.Īntonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons – Violin Concerto in E Major, Op. What happens, then, when the violin is replaced with something else? Listen to this recording of the first movement of the concerto with the violin replaced with a recorder. We’ve heard it and, dare I say, overheard it to the point of not being able to hear it at all. As a violin concerto, it provides the violin with the opportunity to show off the player’s virtuoso skills.

The Siciliana variation (7’00”) is especially refreshing.We are so familiar with a work such as Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto from The Four Seasons. In the opening track of the album, “La Follia,” one never tires of hearing variations on the same sixteen-bar phrase, Schayegh imbuing each with a new mood. In the Largos and Adagios, her embellishments are expressive and sit comfortably among a longstanding Baroque tradition. Short, fast quarter notes vibrate with appropriately subtle vibrato. In the allegros, Schayegh’s phrases are long and not interrupted by the demands of the bow or position shifts. A Baroque specialist who studied, along with the rest of Musica Fiorita’s musicians, at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, her playing is remarkably smooth and inventive. Schayegh’s playing deserves quite a bit of praise as well. The autumnal hunt (track 10) is the perfect balance of jaunty and refined, which is to say, the ensemble has perfectly balanced staccato and legato attacks. The eighth rests in the first movement (track 5) feel like eternities, as if the heat is so oppressive that the group can barely bring themselves to play the next pair of notes, and the ensuing thunderstorm (track 7) is no less convincing.

The group’s Summer is one of the most languorous available, as they imagine themselves out of breath and exhausted.

Spring from 4 seasons by vivaldi