Another season of Vivaldi

One might have thought the music world had quite enough recordings of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, but they keep on coming.

Every taste is catered for, from Takako Nishizaki's immaculately groomed account on her husband's Naxos label to Fabio Biondi's wildman take on Virgin Veritas. Among the Early Music Brigade I'm torn between the sweet-toned Monica Huggett and the brisker-than-brisk Alice Harnoncourt, and I still get a certain guilty frisson from Nigel Kennedy's Autumn, as the violinist slides around those strings as if his fingers were coated in Vaseline.

Donald Armstrong takes a fairly middle-of-the-road course on the NZSO Chamber Orchestra's new recording. It's not without the occasional worrying moment, with Summer's cuckoo sounding a little raw in the throat and some of Winter's winds cutting a little more cruelly than might be expected, but these blemishes are offset by the rhythmic vitality of his playing.

Among the violinist's more winning touches are an almost Celtic flourish to one of the two ornamentations in Winter's slow movement, and his vigorous spiccato work. Behind him, the orchestra is a good deal more polished than I have heard it on the concert stage recently.

The Wellington Town Hall proves a sympathetic venue and Keith Warren has created some full-on tutti that are terrifying in their intensity, making one wonder whether Vivaldi might have been the inspiration for Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

Again, my gripes are minor ones: the murmuring foliage in Spring's Largo might perhaps have rustled a little more forcefully, and Douglas Mews' harpsichord could have been more prominent, particularly in Autumn's slow movement which, after all, is the instrument's big moment.

This is a CD that will make a strong impact on the shop wall, thanks to Craig Potton's luscious cover image, but I for one would have gladly sacrificed some of Potton's photographs for the complete texts of the Vivaldi sonnets that inspired the concertos.

A few sampled verses from each, occasionally difficult to decipher against a colour-saturated landscape, is simply not enough.

* The NZSO Chamber Orchestra: The Four Seasons (Atoll ACD 702)