EMI reviews

Not since Henryk Szeryng’s late 1960s classic version for Philips has Vivaldi’s avian masterpiece sounded as seductively beautiful as here, the music gently cushioned as though on a bed of velvet by the EMI engineers. Flying in the face of the increasingly absurd mannerisms favoured by many period instrument groups, Sarah Chang and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra take us back in time to the glory days of the 1950s and ’60s when such distinguished Italian groups as the Virtuosi di Roma and I Musici prized beauty of sound above all.