The Times Review: ★★★★ Nicola Benedetti — launching her baroque orchestra in fine style

Battersea Arts Centre, SW11

The music of Vivaldi may radiate with the vitality and sparkle of Italian sunshine, but he’s hardly the perfect composer for performing in a heatwave under a platform’s bright lights. The minimalist reveries of Morton Feldman would be much more appropriate; anything but a baroque frenzy of semiquavers jiggling up and down.

On Sunday afternoon, fiddling through three Vivaldi violin concertos, Nicola Benedetti and her new ensemble, the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra (all equipped with that period instrument necessity, gut strings), were obviously feeling the high temperature. But nothing could stop them raising it higher as they launched their four-day Battersea run of an hour-long programme simply labelled Baroque, sharing its title and repertoire with their new album. Even before Vivaldi arrived, bows and fingers

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