‘Red Priest is rapidly becoming established as the UK’s most dynamic, theatrical and outrageously different baroque ensemble’ states the booklet-note to this recording, and after hearing it I can see little reason to disagree. Its recital features many of the expressive devices currently in fashion among the more adventurous baroque interpreters, including huge and sudden contrasts of tempo and dynamic, strongly marked articulation, gunshot bass notes, and some frighteningly fast speeds. It goes further, though, by introducing unconventional harmonies into the Ortiz Recercadas, the occasional bit of hillbilly fiddling, a fade-out in the Handel, and a joyous vocal whoop at the end of the Telemann sonata. It also invents new nicknames for some of the pieces and devises a fantasy programme-note which proposes an ignominious final departure for Vivaldi from Venice, thereby conveniently justifying the CD’s title.
It is all good fun, thanks not least to the fact that Red Priest has the fire, technical ability and sheer daring to bring it off. Piers Adams’s virtuosity on the recorder in particular is staggering, as a dip into giddy reelings of the Vivaldi or Schmelzer will quickly reveal, but the others seem well able to keep up with him. Where it fails, however, is in not showing greater subtlety more often. It is not even as if these players do not have it; indeed, the most enjoyable moments for me were the gently veiled Handel and Julian Rhodes’s sensitive performance on a buff-stopped harpsichord of a Narvaez vihuela piece. But I think in places everyone is trying just a bit too hard to shock. If you heard this at a concert, you would doubtless come away saying that it was brilliant and inspired musicianship, and so it is. But repeated listening on CD runs a very definite risk of becoming tiresome.'