Recordings

At a time when early music authenticity is running hot, and the tendency is to understate rather than showboat, violinist Vanessa-Mae goes against the philosophical grain. Her version of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” joined by a gifted group of young string players dubbed Laureate, bristles with antic intensity and virtuoso embellishments. Baroque restraint gives way to heated stylistic excess, often genuinely exciting to hear. She continues the trend, appropriately enough in context, with a dazzling reading of Giuseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata, full of impressive technical trickery in the service of fiendish drama.

Show-biz rears its head in various ways: After her bravura treatment of the original version of the Tartini, there’s a kitsched-up, synthed-up version commissioned for a commercial for a German cell phone, as well as for part of a silent film project called “The Violin Fantasy.” The disc ends with the goopy, Westernized chinoiserie of Matthew Wilder’s piece “Reflection,” from the score for Disney’s “Mulan.” The mawkish wash of cliches and the cartoonish flourishes of violin stunt-work challenge our memory of the violinist’s earlier interpretation of Vivaldi.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.