Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (2012) was originally designed as a studio recording: the Deutsche Grammophon album employs digital effects like reverb, delay and distortion, most notably on the additional tracks “Spring 0” and “Shadow [1–5]”. But here, receiving its Proms debut with the Britten Sinfonia, directed by virtuoso soloist Thomas Gould, it’s – amazingly – purely acoustic. What sounds like a synthesiser on the recording, we can see, up close and personal, is created through ensemble harmonics. Delay is created by bouncing the call-and-response between multiple soloists. Distortion is created by playing sul ponticello with heavy vibrato.

By cutting the additional tracks, the microphones, and the digital processing, we are just left with the live experience, which, thrillingly, puts the audience in a new space: further from Richter’s recomposition, and closer to Vivaldi’s 1725 original. Gould’s solo violin is bright and fresh, making quick work of Vivaldi’s fireworks. It’s not effortless, and it’s not flawless: but this again just brings us a step back from the impersonal nature of a modern studio recording, and back into the realm of Baroque reality. The sold-out, 6000-capacity audience spontaneously applaud halfway through, following an explosive finale to “Summer 3”, and a few other spots, too: it’s too impressive to keep our hands still.

The theme of recomposition is also presented in the first half, with Corelli’s Concerto grosso in F major, Op. 6 No. 2 (1714) and Tippett’s Fantasia concertante on a Theme of Corelli (1953) played back-to-back without a break. The effect is startling: we literally can’t tell where the original ends and where the recomposition begins. It’s interesting too that Tippett’s recomposition has been performed multiple times at the Proms, but never Corelli’s original on which Tippett’s is based: in this way again, clever programming plays with the idea of recomposition, and how it can help us travel backwards and forwards in time.

The concert opens with another Proms debut, Lera Auerbach’s Sogno di Stabat mater (2005), which, like the other pieces in the programme, is a dialogue on the similarities between cultural and harmonic aesthetics in the 18th and 21st centuries. Selected movements from Pergolesi’s Stabat mater (1736) are turned into a modified concerto grosso, where a strange concertino is made up of violin (Gould), viola (Clare Finnimore) and vibraphone (Owen Gunnell). Closing the concert is a surprise encore of the Danish String Quartet’s Shine You No More (2017) by Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (a recomposition of Dowland’s 1596 “Flow, my tears”), here arranged for full ensemble: a joyful showstopper for a well-deserved standing ovation.

Tickets for all 71 Proms are available from just £8 on the BBC Proms 2023 website.