A Quirky, Stimulating Version of ‘Seasons’

Given the ubiquity of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” in music stores and on easy-listening classical radio, it’s easy to forget just how unusual--even radical--these four concertos are. The concertos take unpredictable structural turns and can make strange, abrasive noises that will disturb the sleep of those who use Baroque music as a tranquil, orderly sedative.

Luckily, Musica Angelica knows how to shake up this piece.

In the first concert of its eighth season in Beverly Hills’ All Saints Church on Friday night, the group brought quirky touches to the familiar openings of each concerto--a peculiar legato phrasing of the opening theme of “Spring,” a meltingly broad treatment for “Summer,” a clipped rhythm for “Fall.” Most startling were the almost brutally dissonant strokes that these period instruments painted in the opening bars of “Winter”; it sounded joltingly contemporary, almost like Stravinsky.

Add to these interpretive touches the driven solo violin of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s Elizabeth Blumenstock, and the unified fizz and fire of the rapid massed string passages, and the result was a most stimulating set of “Seasons.”

Another point was made in the programming: Rather than play all four “Seasons” in a row, the individual concertos were placed at the beginning and ending of each half of the concert, separated by two Vivaldi recorder concertos in G (RV101 and RV443) and his cantata “Cessate, Omai Cessate.” As worthy as these companions are--the cantata is an especially mobile, passionate piece of work--interspersing their relatively conventional formulas with “The Four Seasons” had the effect of underlining the latter’s fresh departures.

Judith Linsenberg made highly virtuosic work of the concertos on alto and soprano recorders, and Jason Snyder revealed a powerful, gorgeous countertenor in the cantata.