Boston Baroque has always been good at projecting a definite personality and saying something fresh about the repertoire without resorting to novelty for the sake of it. To say this Four Seasons is entering a crowded field is surely an understatement – yet such are its merits that its release is more than justified.

Certainly, Martin Pearlman has found the ideal collaborator in Christina Day Martinson. This is story-telling par excellence, Martinson’s polished technique and elegant musicianship fired in the kiln of imagination to produce mindpictures of such vividness that the Greek term ekphrasis, with all its rhetorical associations, hardly covers it. To pluck but a few examples from among Vivaldi’s richly painted bucolic scenes: the tastefully ornamented Largo from Spring is imbued with a genuinely mysterious quality that links it with the somnolent atmosphere of Autumn’s Adagio; among the faster movements, Summer’s concluding Presto is goosebumpinducing, the playing as intense as on Fabio Biondi’s second account (Virgin, 3/04) but without the grotesqueness.

Under Pearlman, Boston Baroque’s playing combines supreme technical precision with unexpected psychological depth: the early part of Summer’s opening Allegro is as tension-filled as the air before a storm; Winter’s Allegro non molto has a frozen emptiness that’s almost metaphysical.

Also included are two equally well performed concerti grossi by Geminiani after Corelli. The sound recording is exceptional, while the sonnets which preface Vivaldi’s four concertos are reprinted along with translations and short analyses of the music. Eschewing the excesses of many previous interpretations while preserving their vitality, this new version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons may well represent the best of all possible worlds.