‘I think the piece is so much more interesting than we give it credit for,” says violinist Daniel Pioro of Vivaldi’s best known and endlessly reinterpreted work. “I wanted this recording to be a sonic devotion to the ecosystem around us and an ode to the imagination of Antonio Vivaldi.” One of Pioro’s ways of making Four Seasons more “interesting” is to add readings of four specially commissioned poems by Michael Morpurgo, inspired by the sonnets that were found on the manuscript parts of the Four Seasons that are now in the Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester. But Pioro also embroiders the solo violin part by improvising around it, introducing folksy elements and quarter tones, in ways that sometimes obscure and sometimes even obliterate the shapes of Vivaldi’s phrases.
Oddly, Morpurgo’s readings of all four poems are placed together first on the disc, before the performance of the concertos, rather than interleaved with them, as logic might suggest. Consequently, the two elements – poems and music – seem more disconnected than they might be. As for the performance, the clipped playing of the Manchester Camerata provides a crisp backdrop to Pioro’s solos, however indulgent those sometimes seem.
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