The cover may clue you in that you're not getting a conventional recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons here, but just in case that doesn't do the job, this is, in the words of violinist
Roby Lakatos (who writes his own utterly distinctive notes), "Vivaldi alla Gypsy." This involves not only a cimbalom but, in some sections, wholesale rewriting of Vivaldi's score (the central movement of "Winter" brings the biggest departure).
Lakatos says that he made the album because his label wanted him to record a classical repertory work, but the links between the gypsy tradition and the classics is centuries old, and
Lakatos comes from a musical family that taught Franz Liszt back in the day.
Lakatos is undoubtedly an exciting and dynamic player. One might object that the logic in when he sticks to the score and when he takes it merely as a stimulus to new music-making is not entirely clear. Moreover,
Lakatos frames the Four Seasons with a pair of works by Kálmán Céski, whom he calls "my brother in soul." These are intended to situate the Four Seasons in history, but they proceed from dreamy choral sounds to rock and jazz accents, and it's not clear how they're supposed to do that. The program is so eclectic that it is in danger of not hanging together, and it concludes, to boot, with a vocally overdubbed Ave Maria by Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia that
Lakatos calls "a return to Paradise, a tribute to the divine." Wild as it all sounds, there's an exuberance that keeps you listening. And the basic idea of a gypsy Four Seasons is indeed perfectly reasonable. Probably not a major entry in the Vivaldi canon, but certainly of great interest for those interested in the great tradition of gypsy music. ~ James Manheim