Performer: Orchestra of Life

Can it really be nearly 25 years since Nigel Kennedy’s landmark first recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? 1989: when Baroque music adopted commercial pop’s mass marketing techniques, selling over two million copies (with a place in the Guinness Book of Records for all-time best-selling classical work) and making the young chap with lightning fingers and sticking-up hair a media sensation.

A brave choice of programme this Wednesday matched the personality of the leather-clad Nigel Kennedy. This included a new self-penned composition, The Four Elements and a unique interpretation – drastically different from Kennedy’s interpretation in the late eighties – of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

Last week’s Birmingham disaster exposed the difficulty Nigel Kennedy has created for himself. He appeared on stage half an hour late, to jeers and slow-clapping from his audience. Rock musicians frequently make late appearances – Hendrix once played a day and a half late at Woodstock – but classical musicians begin promptly.