'I have had lovely thick curly hair all my life, and then a while back I completely shaved it to a No. That's part of the fun, argues Dyer the familiar melodies shift unexpectedly resulting in a pleasurable jolt.ĭyer, always a neat, dapper character on the podium, uses his hair as an analogy.

He drops quavers and semi-quavers like Americans discard 't's, creating an altogether different sound that is as strange as it is familiar. Credit: Daniel Shippīut will a diehard audience of baroque junkies feel the same? In this ear-pricking remake, Richter lobs curve balls via a laptop and Moog synthesiser, which some purists might consider blasphemous. I love it.'īrendan Joyce from the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

He has turned it into something quite different and given it a contemporary feel. 'Vivaldi is incredibly clever, but so is Max Richter. It takes a brave man to fiddle with the perfection of such a perennial pictorial masterpiece, but ABO's director and conductor Paul Dyer, is full of admiration. And those once joyful autumnal dancers that the original composer brought to life in a sonnet seem to have developed hiccups. Under Richter's pen the eeriness of winter morphs into something altogether bleaker, almost dystopian the distinct sounds of spring, with its chirping birds and babbling brooks are muted against an ambient backdrop that is both electronic and acoustic. The famous violin solo that recreates that jagged summer storm is still there, but the rhythm has thrillingly and disconcertingly changed. The voluptuous flesh of the Vivaldi concertos has been pared to the bone, leaving just a few shimmering familiar shapes behind. In an era of dismantling musical barriers, several come crashing down here.

Max richter vivaldi four seasons