Paul Dyer explores The Four Seasons‘ French connection in a Baroque cover version.

If you’ve ever caught yourself humming The Four Seasons in the shower, rest assured you’re not the first to seize on that vocal impulse and run with it. Twenty-five years after the death of Vivaldi, French composer Michel Corrette (1707-1795) paid tribute to the Red Priest’s most popular work with a sacred setting of Spring, reborn as the grand motet Laudate Dominum for choir, four solo singers and orchestra.

 This rarely heard delight from the French Baroque is an apt centrepiece in the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s first concerts for spring, performed alongside Vivaldi’s own choral masterpiece Dixit Dominus and another French Baroque work unleashing the forces of nature in music: Jean-Féry Rebel’s harmonically daring Les Éléments.

Artistic director and harpsichordist Paul Dyer explains how the Celestial Vivaldi program came together.

How well does the string writing in the Spring violin concerto translate into this vocal setting, and how different is the instrumental component?

The instrumental score is very Vivaldi-esque. Corrette has well and truly pinched it! Corrette’s work isn’t an exact setting but certainly takes the main themes we know and love. The choir and soloists sing many of these and guest concertmaster Rachael Beesley has some stunning musical...