There was a time a few years back when you would rarely hear Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons performed live. The feeling seemed to be that like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata or Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, this music was so familiar and ubiquitous – on ringtones, TV ads, film soundtracks – that no one would want to hear it in a concert hall.

How things have changed. I’ve lost count of the number of performances I’ve seen and new albums I’ve listened to – whether straight, reimagined or adapted – over the past couple of years featuring the four violin concertos from 1720s Venice.

And the queues outside Sydney’s Great Synagogue, stretching either side of the imposing building on a cold Tuesday night, said it all: this is the stuff that people want to hear. And why not when you have such an exciting talent as Kristian Winther leading a crack team of young chamber musicians in a concert which featured not four but 14 seasons in all?

Live at the Great Synagogue. Photo supplied

Part of the Live at the Great series organised by conductor and pianist Vladimir Fanshil and his wife...