Born in 2007 in Melbourne, Christian Li is said to be the youngest person ever to record Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos. Li's performance is a bit of a mixed bag, but it has the virtue of being entirely his own; there is nothing of the mechanical prodigy here. It's essentially a reading in the old symphony orchestra style, with few concessions to the historical performance movement. Li offers big, dramatized realizations of Vivaldi's seasonal effects and some rather garish sforzandos, but he leads the Melbourne ...
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Born in 2007 in Melbourne, Christian Li is said to be the youngest person ever to record Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concertos. Li's performance is a bit of a mixed bag, but it has the virtue of being entirely his own; there is nothing of the mechanical prodigy here. It's essentially a reading in the old symphony orchestra style, with few concessions to the historical performance movement. Li offers big, dramatized realizations of Vivaldi's seasonal effects and some rather garish sforzandos, but he leads the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra himself (his control of the group is excellent in what must have been highly unfamiliar terrain), and he has a Baroque-style continuo that is allowed improvisatory room; there seems to be both a harpsichord and a lute. Li is brilliant in Vivaldi's storm passages, but where he really shines is in the four encores. These include a folk-flavored piece by composer Li Zili, the whiz-bang La Ronde des Lutins of Antonio Bazzini, a suitably singing arrangement of the...
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