Four Seasons

It's easy to get used to listening to near-perfect recordings and performances of The Four Seasons. With so many recordings available, you can have your pick of styles.

I remember confidently ordering tickets for a local group's performance of The Four Seasons in Salzburg one summer. How could I go wrong? The performance started off in fine fashion. The soloist was huge, confident, and energetic. The rest of the group was solid and enthusiastic. But after about 12 minutes, the soloist began to come apart at the seams. He couldn't complete the difficult sections in Summer. The group would restart and restart. I was fascinated.

I had almost forgotten that experience when I first listened to this recording. Such violin soloist flubs are unknown in the mature Anne-Sophie Mutter's recordings. But I was astonished to find that her supporting cast of Trondheim Soloists (led by Bjarne Fiskum and including soloists Byvind Gimse, and Knut Johannesen) was apparently playing a different piece, and not very well. Ms. Mutter is also credited as conductor. I suspect that she should have scheduled many more practices.

The recording also has moments when another take would have been in order.

But I learned something valuable from listening to Ms. Mutter soar about the muddled noise: It matters who else is playing with you for The Four Seasons.

If you are an Anne-Sophie Mutter fan (as I am), you'll undoubtedly want to listen to this CD. But I think you'll be more pleased if you limit yourself to the first allegro from Spring from The Four Seasons for 3 minutes and 36 seconds during which the Trondheim Soloists perform okay in the Simply Anne-Sophie CD. Good editing choice there.

I graded Anne-Sophie's playing as a five, the recording quality as a four, and the Trondheim Soloists as a 1.

I will forsake my usual verbose review - words simply fail me here. From the "album cover" to the performance, this is crass exploitation at its worst. If anyone buying this is even remotely interested in the music, they might give the Carmignola 4 Seasons on Sony a hearing - it's just one of about 100 preferable alternatives.

It's really odd how mediocrity gets the spotlight, while artistry is so often relegated to obscurity. Mutter studied violin with Aida Stucki, a wonderful artist whose early Vox LP recordings of Mozart Concertos are genuine collector's items.

Why not issue some of THOSE on CD instead of settling for a sham like this. Apparently we just don't live in a graceful age.

I think we may have the definitive recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons here with the talents of Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Trondheim Soloists. A rich, full-bodied Four Seasons is presented here; a genuine product of musical growth for Mutter, given she recorded the seasons nearly 20 years ago for EMI. Harald Wieser says it best in the liner notes, "The recording that you made with Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic was very beautiful. Very beautiful, but also very stolid. It was like a good, heavy red wine. A musical High Mass celebrating The Four Seasons. But it is the popping of vintage champagne corks that one hears in your playing with these young Norwegians, playing in which you are so infectiously youthful and one can almost literally see the twinkle in your eye....For me the High Mass has been turned into a high spirited celebration, with a pure and sometimes even boisterous delight in music-making. In the Presto from "Summer" and the Allegro from "Autumn," the Trondheimers literally leap from their seats...Your four seasons for Karajan was an example of life as art. The present recording, under your own direction, is an example of art as life."

Mutter makes the listener see and even hear the colours of the seasons, creating a distinctive tone and mood with each movement. Indeed, one can only think of Vivaldi smiling upon this recording, as this is the way he intended for his Four Seasons to be played.

Tartini's "Devil's Trill" (as I've stated in previous reviews, the veritable Tracy to Vivaldi's Hepburn), is just as enthralling, something that must have been a challenge to Mutter, for after the final Allegro of Winter, it seems as though nothing could make it better. Yet everything, from her andantes to her larghettos to her cadenza, is absolutely stunning.

An added bonus is the presentation of the CD altogether, as the packaging and liner notes feature the artwork of Gotthard Graubner, who is famous not for illustrations of musical works, but for reactions to the music he hears. The artistic complement to the musician Mutter. Also appreciated in the booklet is the original text of the poems Vivaldi based his Four Seasons on. The result is a well-rounded celebration of art and life. The only thing the listener wants from the recording is the chance to hear it again.