The New Four Seasons - Vivaldi Recomposed (LP)

When Max Richter's Recomposed first exploded into our collective ears almost a decade ago, a 59-minutes-28-seconds sonic starburst, the effect for so many people was total. We hadn't heard anything like that, ever. Experiencing it felt as though we were being catapulted onto another plane, reverberated through the cosmos by this epiphanic soundworld. In this "alternative rendering", Chineke!, the groundbreaking British ensemble consisting of majority Black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians, and the brilliant soloist, Elena Urioste, are playing on gut strings and period instruments: the sort that Vivaldi would have heard, and played, in his own time.

Having performed Recomposed live many times in the last decade, Richter was inspired by a special rendition of the work on period instruments to take "a new trip through the text using Vivaldi's own colours". The New Four Seasons applies a Baroque palette to the score in which he transforms or subverts fragments from the original four violin concertos by refracting them through different musical prisms, spinning them into different shapes and colours and enveloping them in completely different orchestral settings.

Richter has revisited the electronics too, here opting for Moog synths from the 70s - "the equivalent of the Stradivarius". Asked about the difference in sound between modern and period strings, he laughs: "I heard someone say it's the difference between smooth peanut butter and crunchy peanut butter, which encapsulates it really well!"

Richter is enthusiastic about this blend. "I love the slight grittiness and earthy feeling that gut strings have," he says. "I wanted to match that flinty, haptic, tactile texture with the electronic elements." The new record is produced on an analogue mixing desk, with the composer himself playing an early Moog, dating from the seventies. "Those are the first-generation synths, and I've heard them described as the Stradivarius of the synthesiser," he laughs. "They have a certain presence and authority about them. I mean, they are crude in a way, but they are also like someone inventing the wheel. They have gravitas."