Classical Music - Red Priest

Vivaldi purists may balk at a rendition of the Four Seasons which inserts the word carnival into the title, but the Baroque ensemble Red Priest are not shy of courting controversy. They even proffer as their motto, 'If nobody goes over the top, how will we know what lies on the other side?' Not that their esteem for the great composer is at all diminished by their zeal for re-interpretation and ostentatious stage sets, and the name 'Red Priest' is a tribute to Vivaldi's signature flaming red hair. But whilst classical music does not frequently invite such adjectives as 'twisted', 'wicked' and 'heretical', they are abundantly applied to the output of the boundary-pushing group who formed in 1997 and are headed by the innovative recorder player Piers Adams - usually in conjunction with some very rigorous praise. A recent review said of 'The Carnival of the Seasons, "A wholly irreverent and highly enlightened approach to the piece we all love to hate ... Red Priest puts the viva in Vivaldi." The philosophy of Red Priest is all about trying to capture the spirit of the baroque period which, in Adam's opinion, was more about rule breaking, experimentation and thieving from fellow composers than reverence and reproduction. "Music was in every sense a living art", he states, "but this does not sit comfortably with today's trends simply to reproduce past performances, and to bow down humbly to the greatness of those before us: that is an abdication of artistic responsibility". Red Priest will be performing tonight at South Down's College as part of the Nicholas Yonge Society programme. ER