Winner of MTN South African Music Award 2010 in the category of Best Popular Classical Album.

“Daniel Rowland and the Stellenbosch University Camerata have been performing this spicy cocktail of eight seasons since the ensemble was formed in 2008. Piazzolla’s Four Seasons, originally written for a small band with the composer himself paying bandoneon and here performed in one of a number of subsequent arrangements for string ensemble, consists of four portraits of Buenos Aires, urban counterparts to Vivaldi’s portraits of rural life. Rowland and his players tackle them in a suitable frenzy of heat and colour, the quotations from Vivaldi peeking cheekily out from the potent mix of vibrant rhythms, complete with percussion, and the welter of glissandos and ponticello effects.

The Vivaldi, too, is vividly performed. In the fast movements, and they are fast, tuttis are clipped and dry. The performance conforms to the current approach to historically informed interpretation, with modern players on modern instruments taking what they will from their period colleagues.” The Strad, Feb 2011