Classical Music With A Sense Of Humor, Part II
Priest on the Run was the Baroque quartet Red Priest’s first recording for Dorian, released
in the late 1990s. It was a thematic affair based on Antonio Vivaldi’s flight from Venice at the time
the composer was going abroad, assembled from the pens of the finest composers of the Baroque
era. For the present compilation, Red Priest turns its attention to the spooky, the frightening, the
downright scary. Nightmare in Venice is a deliciously Baroque Halloween-fest if there ever
was one. Replete with hissing and catcalls, this disc is a chiller.
Image is not everything, though Red Priest has that quality in spades. This is a quartet of the
best
Baroque specialists the United Kingdom has to offer. Although Red Priest was praised by
Gramophone Magazine, the group also received criticism for basically not being serious.
That seems to be precisely the point. Classical music has ceased being fun (presuming that it ever
was fun to begin with). What Red Priest has done is to market itself brilliantly to the young and
educated crowd able to recognize not only their musical brilliance, but their promotional brilliance
as well. Nightmare in Venice is splendid for no other reason than it brings together the more
gothic compositions of all of the greatest composers of an artistic and philosophic era. Much of the
music presented here looks forward towards Romanticism, skipping classicism altogether.
After hearing Priest on the Run, I thought to myself, "I hope these guys never record
The Four Seasons one more time." But times has passed, and at this point I cannot wait
to
hear their Seasons. I suspect it will be a greater kick in the pants than Il Giardino Armonico
(Electra/Asylum 1998). Red Priest is currently on tour delivering the Seasons in a way only they
can—with grace, panache, and cojones this BIG.
Visit Red Priest
and Dorian Records.
~ C. Michael Bailey
