There are two times two ways of approaching The Four Seasons: first, using either period instruments or modern ones; second, treating them as a separate work or as the first four concertos of Il cimento. Fitness of style is a thing that can apply across the board. Of those here listed, only The English Concert, in both recordings, matches the instruments with the period of the music, and in the more recent recording (Archiv) it does so without the abrasive tonal edge that bothers some listeners, accustomed to today's well-polished sounds. The English Concert's earlier version on CRD—release initially on a single LP—became part of an integral LP set of Il cimento but the remaining eight concertos were dispersed on two more CDs (CRD3410, 8/86 and 3411, 9/86), losing a prime opportunity and yielding this sadly underfilled, 'seasonal' disc now under review. Tempos having become brisker in the intervening six years, the Archiv CD runs its course even more rapidly with wonderful style and panache; it remains by far the best version on CD (or LP).
Denon have set out to do what CRD might better have done: though the disc by I Solisti Italian is titled ''Le Quatro Stagioni'' it contains the first six concertos of Il cimento and is announced as ''Vol. 1''. Unfortunately the performances, though not heavy-weight (this is a 12-man band), have little to commend them. Once ''Spring'' has passed, many tempos suffer from binding brakes and a measure of turgidity sets in. The soloists (there are four) display little imagination and adhere to vibrato is on the old-fashioned side and intonation is not always comfortably secure. The annotation, tinged with Mills and Boon, is, however, revealing: Il cimento was, it seems, published by ''Charles Michell le Seine'', and the soloist's chromatic phrases in ''Spring''/III ''make us momentarily imagine the voluptuous figures of the girls in the Pieta''—will the video follow?
The shortcomings of the ASMF's over-cooked and sometimes under-paced (43 minutes) recording of 1979 were well listed by NA (12/80) and they are unchanged by the transfer to CD. The Concerto grosso, RV562a (solos for violin and pairs of oboes and horns), recorded four years earlier and added for good measure, has no other version. The slow movement, in which Carmel Kaine is the persuasive soloist, provides relief from the ceremonial monotony bred by the horns' limited stock of notes, as do the episodes from which they are absent in the outer movements. Its rarity value isn't enough to make the disc as a whole recommendable. The sound-quality of all four discs is too good to need consideration in choosing among them.'