Birmingham Town Hall Four Seasons Review in the Birmingham Post 4****

There are Four Seasons and there are Four Seasons. Go along to a performance of Vivaldi’s well-worn concerto-quartet purveyed on an impresario’s conveyor-belt and you will probably go home unchanged by this latest encounter with the old warhorse. But anyone who heard this account from violinist David le Page, directing the Orchestra of the Swan of which he is normally leader, will have come away exhilarated and gratified, as though having experienced the work for the first time. Le Page’s take on the piece was fresh, imaginative, spontaneous, daringly improvisatory (not least some drunkenly surreal outbursts in “Autumn”, with a country-and-western tang later in the same concerto and even some Bartok pizzicatos slapped out by the lower strings). This was the most refreshing account of the Four Seasons I have ever heard since the teenage time I put a newly-delivered LP of it onto my little Dansette record-player and revelled in this exciting music unknown to me.