Vivaldi, played badly, is the worst classical music on earth

If you like at least some Vivaldi, it behooves you to seek out the recordings of some of the newly rediscovered material played by the Accademia Bizantina - excellent

If y'all want to hear Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" for the First Time, take in an informed early music performance by Brecon Baroque lead by Rachael Podger.  Buy the CD.  Extraordinary performance, recording quality and dynamics.   What's interesting about this performance is that there is only one player on a part.  Not a big, over blown, cumbersome orchestra.  This is baroque chamber music played the way it was meant to be played.

Link on Amazon

You can easily find this on YouTube, but you won't hear the dynamics.  Buy the CD.  Really.  Just do it.

Brecon Baroque is on Tidal, yeay. :)

And on LP! Thanks Russ, another good Vivaldi recording by Podger is "L'Estro Armonico".

I'm glad you made this post Erik--i had forgotten a note i'd made to myself a few years ago about a new Vivaldi performance of the 4 seasons by Adrian Chandler who both conducts and plays the violin--it was intriguing because they used a 3 string violin which Vivaldi wrote for and was in use when the piece was composed--or something like that.  I ran across a review of it in the Gramophone Newsletter.  At the time i could not find it to listen and soon forgot--but now that i can stream i have discovered it on Tidal, MQA and since i haven't heard that music since my wedding 32 years ago i guess i can take it 😀   Here's a link to the review which i had sent to myself in an email and found again although i don't see any reference to the 3 string violin here but they do mention it on Tidal.
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/vivaldi-the-four-seasons-bassoon-concertos

And BTW, anything involving a violin played badly is the worst music on Earth--like nails on a blackboard !