At one level it is a virtuoso display that has one breathless, but there are genuine revelations from having the timbre of the flute in this music.

The distinctiveness of the flute version with James Galway as soloist needs no underlining. Both at the Royal Festival Hall and on television with these same players he has amply demonstrated the genuinely artistic results he can achieve. He has been quoted as saying that he plays "much more like a string player than a woodwind player", and certainly he copes amazingly well with the most unlikely demisemiquaver passage work that requires feats of tonguing that would have been out of the question in the seventeenth century. In any case he makes no claims on authenticity; at one level it is a virtuoso display that has one breathless, but there are genuine revelations from having the timbre of the flute in this music. Arguably the bird imitations are the more naturalistic, and certainly I relish the clear forecast of Gluck's Elysian Fields that you get in the slow movement of the last concerto, when as here Vivaldi's lovely melody over pizzicato accompaniment is played on the flute.

-- Gramophone [2/1977, reviewing the original LP release]