What impressed when it was premiered in the 2000-capacity hall of the Barbican in 2012 was the work’s scale and ambition. The physicality of it really strikes you up close. We’re used to looping now so when you hear it on record part of you assumes it’s electronic, but it’s all scored and all played. Winter I is fairly faithful to the original but chopped into a 7/8 time signature. Unlistenable now, it is hellish hold music while you wait for an operator, your call recorded for quality purposes.

Whereas there are few audible traces of La primavera (Spring) in E major, Op. It’s still thrilling you don’t need to try to make it exciting. Sure he keeps largely intact certain moments like the crashing violin cadenza of L’estate (Summer) in G minor, Op. The gorgeous filmic sound of Autumn I just sounds like Richter. As a reworking of The Four Seasons, Richter says even when it’s mostly new it still sounds like Vivaldi, but I’m not so sure. Call it post-classical or neoclassical or contemporary classical, it’s very much the sibling to the emotive and stirring category Scandi Noir and the catalytically influential work of Arvo Pärt.

Richter, in creating his “recomposed” version, threw out 75% of the Vivaldi material and recast the rest into the loops and phases of his own style.

Palmer reimagines three works by Bach, and Richter radically reconfigures Vivaldi, making beautifully strange one of the most famous works in the classical canon. The tension between familiarity and novelty was explored in an evening opening with the UK premiere of Ben Palmer’s Bach Dreams and closing with Max Richter’s The Four Seasons Recomposed from 2012. Ben Palmer directing the Covent Garden Sinfonia

Max richter vivaldi four seasons