Red Priest burst on to the stage, a bit like a thunderclap, with violins and recorders streaking.

This Lewes-based international ensemble swung Vivaldi in a very theatrical fashion but with no cheapening of the music at all.

The quartet was dressed in reds and blacks and did indeed give a show as well as a master class in the music of Vivaldi and his contemporaries.

And did they perform his Four Seasons? They most certainly did but this wasn't the staid reading that one so often hears these days.

For a start, they cut up the concertos to illustrate the various seasons of the year and to show what music fellow composers were making.

These are musicians who move around a great deal, giving the audience a visual as well as an aural treat.

To a packed St George's Church, Red Priest gave a heavy picture of music of the 17th Century and the reception was rapturous. Three children seated in front of me smiled all the way through and were wide-eyed at the range of music played on the recorder by Piers Adams.

If your only memory of recorder playing comes from your school days, then this sound was completely different.

The instrument, in the hands of a master, was so versatile that it became a virtuoso performance.

What Red Priest did for me was to make me root out and listen to my few Purcell recordings after the group's rendition of music from his opera The Fairy Queen, which really got me.

And a reading of Biber's Easter Sonata, The Crucifixion, came complete with the knocking of nails into the cross - a sensational piece of music.

Red Priest is Piers Adams with Julia Bishop on violin, Angela East on cello and Howard Beach on harpsichord and they certainly brought Vivaldi and his period spectacularly to life.