To have Antonio Vivaldi"s most popular work placed next to the concerto for which he was best known a century ago - a fake by Fritz Kreisler - invites an investigation into how The Four Seasons became the biggest hit in classical music. At any given time, more than 100 recordings are likely to be available; and there is probably a "Four Seasons" mobile phone ringtone. But during the first half of the 20th century, the "Red Priest" was virtually forgotten. The first modern edition of The Four Seasons, issued in 1920, was arranged for four hands at one piano. In 1927 the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari published his "transcription", with a dedication to that keen amateur fiddler Benito Mussolini, and 15 years later he made the first recording. It still sounds impressive, even though the soloist is unidentified, a symphonic complement of strings is used (supported by an organ in the ripieno, with a piano doctored to sound like a harpsichord for the continuo), and some passages are recomposed. But meanwhile a revolution had been going on. Since about 1920 musicians such as Adolf Busch, Edwin Fischer and Hermann Abendroth in Germany, and Anthony Bernard in England, had been using chamber orchestras for Bach. In 1935 Busch appeared at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, leading a tiny conductorless orchestra in two evenings of Bach"s Brandenburg Concertos. The records and tours of the Busch Chamber Players galvanized a generation of younger musicians, not least in Italy; and when Busch emigrated to America, he had a similar effect there. The next Four Seasons recording, in 1947, was made in New York by violinist Louis Kaufman with Henry Swoboda conducting a chamber orchestra. Europeans were more likely to hear the 1951 Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra LP, conducted by Karl Münchinger with soloist Reinhold Barchet. In Italy too, scholarship had moved on, and since 1948 Renato Fasano had been conducting his ensemble I Virtuosi di Roma, using a quartet of soloists in The Four Seasons. Their first LP came out in 1955, followed by a stereo remake in 1960. Their conductorless Roman rivals I Musici, active from 1952, made an LP - with soloist Felix Ayo - that was a hit when released in 1956, its beautiful sleeve design matching the music-making. The symphonic tradition did not die instantly, witness two versions with John Corigliano and the New York Philharmonic, a dull 1955 Guido Cantelli reading and a zippier 1964 Leonard Bernstein version. Leopold Stokowski even weighed in. We lacked only period instruments, and in 1977 Nikolaus Harnoncourt obliged, with his Concentus Musicus Wien ensemble and wife Alice Harnoncourt as soloist. Suddenly, details such as the barking dog in the Largo of "Spring", or the raindrops in the Largo of "Winter", came alive. Since then, ever more extreme interpretations have been visited on these picturesque concertos, each one striving to be more "authentic" and bizarre than its predecessors. Where does this performance stand, amid the bewildering number of choices? Gil Shaham, who was in his early twenties at the time of the sessions, and his colleagues embody a number of the strands woven into the performance history of The Four Seasons. Born in America, Shaham was brought up in Israel and his main teachers were Samuel Bernstein at the Rubin Academy, Jerusalem, and the redoubtable Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School, New York. He has a particularly pleasing platform manner and, no matter how brilliant his accomplishments, always appears modest. For these recordings he chose to work with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, an American conductorless ensemble in the Busch or I Musici tradition. Together, Shaham and the Orpheus virtuosi attend to the details mentioned in the four sonnets that Vivaldi published with the concertos, yet also phrase musically and poetically, not rushing the music off its feet or imposing a "concept" on it. They use instruments set up in the modern way - Shaham himself, a 1699 Stradivarius - but have obviously paid attention to the period instrument brigade. Viennese born, Fritz Kreisler was a charming violinist and a composer with a knack of churning out appealing melodies. From around 1900 he slyly presented many of his pieces as "arrangements" from "manuscripts" by such Baroque and Classical composers as Pugnani, Martini, Porpora, Cartier, Francaeur and Dittersdorf. Emboldened by the success of his shorter forgeries, in 1904 Kreisler wrote an entire three-movement "Vivaldi Concerto" with string accompaniment. It sounded nothing like Vivaldi"s real music but, as virtually all the genuine stuff still languished in libraries, no one cottoned on. Kreisler"s scam was exposed in 1935, causing a worldwide scandal, and nowadays this concoction is described - equally inaccurately - as "in the style of Vivaldi". But it is fun to hear it so well performed. Tully Potter 1/2012