Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
Le Quattro Stagioni
Oboe Concerto in D major, RV450
Michaela Hrabankova (oboe)
Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal/Stefan Plewniak (violin)
rec. 2023, l’Opéra Royal de Versailles
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS138 [48]

This will be one of my shorter reviews because I’m afraid I did not like this one bit. From the opening of Spring to the closing of Winter (and the following oboe concerto), I found almost nothing that pleased me.

My reference for Vivaldi’s miracles of imagination is Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante, who take the word pictures of the associated poems and give them musical life so brilliantly. Obviously, with such oft-recorded music, it can be difficult to make an impact on the catalogue with something that sounds like everyone else. Biondi had the advantage of recording the works more than twenty years ago (twice) when the field was less crowded. In making his mark, Stefan Plewniak chooses to strip the pieces back to bare bones, attacking them so relentlessly and with such stridency that I found them almost impossible to listen to. There was no colour or variety within a movement; the summer storm sounded chuggingly mechanical, the cracking of the ice in Winter likewise. This is historically informed practice at its most extreme and severe, which I thought was a thing of the past.

My colleague Curtis Rogers reviewed a 2020 disc of Vivaldi concertos with Stefan Plewniak as soloist, and praised the performances as being “on a par with the best historically informed exponents of this repertoire”, including Fabio Biondi among them. I listened to some excerpts from this recording and to my considerable surprise, found them to be dynamic, rounded and characterful, so I can see why Curtis made the comments he did. So where did this charmless and cheerless Four Seasons come from? It is so far away from the vivid, joyful and characterful Vivaldi of Biondi.

There is nothing wrong with the actual playing which is crisp and accurate. The production values are very good as well: the booklet notes are very good, given how well-known the concertos are, and the recording is very immediate. However, a run time of less than 48 minutes for a full-price disc is very poor value, even if you were in tune with Plewniak’s ideas. Yes, the Four Seasons are only ever going to occupy around forty minutes, but having decided to include an extra work, why stop there? It’s not as though the ten minutes of RV450 make much difference (or indeed much sense as a filler, and I use the word very loosely).

I’m sure there will be plenty who find much to enjoy in Plewniak’s Four Seasons, so please do check them out on wherever you stream or sample your music, but I found them strident and without charm.

David Barker

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