MUSIC

Colston Hall, Bristol (Wed 18 Jan)

Telephone-hold to elevator music, ‘The Four Seasons’ are part of the aural wallpaper, but they’ve lost none of their pulling power. Despite ticket prices starting north of where the BSO leaves off, the Colston Hall was rammed. But then this was no ordinary trot through Vivaldi’s enhanced weather report. The Berlin Phil never warmed-up offstage with chants of ‘Oggy, Oggy, Oggy, Oi, Oi, Oi’; Nigel Kennedy (pictured) however is never going to let you forget his penchant for the ‘beautiful game’ – and in a game of two halves, the first unveiled his own response to ‘The Four Seasons’: a promiscuous ‘Four Elements’ (reduced here to three for reasons of time). With a line-up augmenting strings with vocals, percussion, keyboards and the marimba/vibes of the wonderful Orphy Robinson, the ‘Elements’ mixed Celtic mist with Balkan sultriness, knowing nods to airborne Vaughan Williams and watery Debussy, wide-eyed whimsy and pile-driving pizzazz. But it added up to less than the sum of its parts, too often falling back on anodyne ‘noodling’. Vivaldi had been treated to ‘The Kennedy Rewrite’. By turn clever or irritating, charming (really!) or grotesque, fun or deadly, guileless or pretentious, it went down a storm with the fans. Accompanied by winsome piano, Spring’s slow movement dived into a cocktail bar; by the time Summer was sliding over the yardarm, unable to square the contradictions, I followed suit! (Paul Riley).

Copyright Paul Riley 2012