Thibaut Garcia ARANJUEZ

 ARANJUEZ

Alexandre Tharaud VERSAILLES

                                                                   VERSAILLES

Thomas Dunford / Jean Rondeau BARRICADES

                                                                  BARRICADES

Johanna Rose HISTOIRES D'UN ANGE

One of the most peculiar features of the arts in the lavish Versailles court of the Sun King was his conservatism. His instrumental music produced a series of dances during decades, the so-called suites, of unchangeable composition, barely reminding us of old rhythms like the gallarda or the pavana which made room for novelties such as the gigue or the sarabande, installed from then on for future decades. 

The gambist Marin Marais, referred to as the angel for his delecacy in comparison to the devil Forqueray, played a central role in that little but great world of short melodic stories, charming subtleties, delicate ornaments and changing repertoire - Changes that made everything remain the same. Surely De Visée, a musician like Marais from the Sun King's own chamber, accompanied him dozens of times on the theorbo and the guitar.Our concert, a close visit to that court environment, will take the form of a large suite, initiated by a prelude in improvised style, followed by exotic pieces of a - merely apparent - goût étranger, truly as familiar as the allemande or the rondeau. To finish, like the great operas of Lully, there will be a series of imposed variations such as the chaconne and the folia, that will bring us echoes of that majestic, albeit intimate and decadent world which reached its maximum brilliance on the eve of its extinction.

Lucile Boulanger LES DÉFIS DE MR. FORQUERAY

In her debut recording for harmonia mundi, Lucile Boulanger explores the facets of Antoine Forqueray’s career as a virtuoso instrumentalist: adept in a wide range of Italian repertoire and skilled at transcribing works originally intended for the violin, he could try it on for size, as it were, before settling on a different medium.

With the viola da gamba, he extended the technique of playing it far beyond the norm, confronting the performer with fiendishly difficult challenges… which have been met brilliantly by the hugely talented foursome heard here.

Nils Mönkemeyer BAROQUE

Finally after all these years of reviews, I have a virtuosic viola album to review! The ‘King of Instruments’ (as it has been dubbed in certain circles), is often the considered the poor cousin to the violin but it has a beautifully resonant tone and this depth of sound makes it pleasing to the ears at all times. This beautiful collection of pieces from the Baroque era shows off the German virtuoso Nils Mönkemeyer’s technical and musical capabilities without ever making these difficult works sound even remotely challenging.

Many viola soloists can find it awkward to put together a full concert or album of works all originally written for viola so in the tradition of Bach himself, the J.S. Bach Cello Suite No. 5 has been rearranged for viola and theorbo. Now before you go running for the hills scared of what a theorbo is – it’s just a lovely sounding, though extremely complicated kind of guitar or lute.

The opening work is by the relatively unknown Robert de Visée (from the courts of French kings Louis XIV and XV), and is simply delightful! The three short movements start off with such French flair, that there is an interesting contrast to Bach’s now famous contrapuntal style (more than one melodic idea at the same time) which follows directly. Then another interlude of French Baroque, with some Michel Lambert (whose daughter went on to become the wife of the famous Jean-Baptiste Lully) before finishing with more Bach. Although Mönkemeyer has recorded a number of albums in the past, this is the first time that I have heard him perform and I will be searching through his back catalogue as I so enjoyed this lovely album. (Kate Rockstrom)

Manuel Barrueco BACH & DE VISÉE

Robert de Visée The so-called 'baroque' guitar is a recognizable ancestor of today's classic instrument, but whereas the modern instrument has six single strings, the earlier one had five octave- or unison-tuned pairs of strings. These latter usually stood in some form of re-entrant tuning i.e. the lowest-placed strings were not always the lowest-pitched ones, and this produced ambiguous textures (which, if any, are the bass notes) that the modern guitar cannot imitate. At the same time it is possible to produce adaptations that are satisfactory in their musical effect, and the unidentified arranger of the items by Visee in this recording has done just that. Visee, court guitarist to Louis XIV of France, and one of the most refined composers of music for the five-course guitar (all those who composed for this idiosyncratic instrument also played it), left 12 suites of 'baroque' constitution, some clearly inviting the player to choose his movements (as Francois Couperin did in his ordres), as well as a number of other separate pieces. Suite No. 11 may be and here is played in its entirety. Lully was Visee's superior at court but the tribute paid in the arrangement of the Ouverture from Lully's ballet La grotte de Versailles was a sincere one. Barrueco delivers this ornament-encrusted music in magnificent style.
The items of Bach deserve no lesser encomium, for Barrueco is one of the most cultured guitarists on the present world stage. The annotator, Matthias Henke, bypassing the ambiguity of its inscription, avers that ''[BWV998] can be termed an original work for the lute'', a view not widely shared even by lutenists, who believe it to have been intended for the lute-harpsichord. Indeed, the scholar Eugen Dombois considers the allegro to be the least likely of the three movements to have been meant for the lute, but according to Henke ''[it] takes us entirely back into the world of the lute''. Fortunately, no such doubts attend the quality of Barrueco's performance of either this (probably assembled, rather than originally written in that form) triptych or BWV1004, borrowed from the violin and much in vogue with guitarists at the moment. However, few are likely to match the poise, style and comprehensive command that Barrueco brings to the music in this finely engineered recording, one of the best I have heard for a long time.' (Gramophone)

Rolf Lislevand LA MASCARADE

 In this inspiring album – his first solo disc for ECM – Norwegian early music performer Rolf Lislevand turns his attention to the music of two composers from the court of Louis XIV: Robert de Visée (c. 1655-1732) and the Italian-born Francesco Corbetta (c. 1615-1681), and plays their masterpieces with historical awareness and an inventiveness which belongs to the tradition. De Visée wrote about playing what the instruments themselves called for, advice Lislevand takes to heart here, adding improvised introductions to passacaglias from both composers.

On La Mascarade, Lislevand uses two contrasting instruments. He plays the theorbo, the dark-toned and earthy king of the lutes, and the Baroque guitar, with its sparkling, crystal-clear sonorities. The 17th guitar, smaller than its modern counterpart, had five pairs of strings, tuned in unisons and octaves. “Musicians of four centuries ago had already developed the instrument’s playing style to explore all the possibilities of surprising strummed rhythms and harmonies, often very modern-sounding to our ears. Moreover the instrument’s many different tunings prefigure the experimental tunings used by improvising musicians today… It seems that guitar players of the seventeenth century did exactly what guitar players have done ever since: compose music with the guitar on their knees by listening to the exciting new sounds that unexpectedly occurred when they put their fingers on new and unusual places on the fingerboard.”

Where the Baroque guitar had no bass register, the theorbo was effectively a bass lute: “Together these instruments create a chiaroscuro in music, an image in sound of the Baroque theory of that magic tension that exists between light and darkness.”

Francesco Corbetta’s virtuosity was first celebrated outside his native Italy. In his fascinating liner notes, Lislevand reports that Corbetta charmed Charles II in London, “and left a whole court strumming on small Baroque guitars.” Robert de Visée was Corbetta’s student In Versailles, and went on to become one of the Sun King’s composers, as well as his guitarist and theorbo player. “De Visée played his own music at court,” writes Lislevand, “occasionally in the king’s bedroom, while the monarch was taking supper. On request he would play his guitar walking two steps behind the king during the daily royal promenade of the gardens of Versailles – the first Walkman in musical history.”