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Reviewer:
Lindsay Kemp
In their quickly
expanding discography Jonathan Cohen’s Arcangelo are showing themselves to be
among the most versatile ensembles around, as at home in Bach’s B minor Mass
as Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres, in Mendelssohn concert arias as in
Monteverdi madrigals. This is their first release entirely devoted to
instrumental chamber music, for which they have chosen the first of Buxtehude’s
two published books of trio sonatas, his Op 1 of 1694. Buxtehude’s trios are not
so much in the planned-out Corellian mould as the freer-formed stylus
phantasticus manner of the mid-17th century, even breaking into
quasi-recitative in places, though there are also solidly crafted moments to
remind us of the composer’s eminence as an organist. They differ, too, from most
other trio sonatas in that their upper parts are for violin and viola da gamba
rather than two equal-tessitura instruments, with resultant losses in lightness
and gains in richness and depth.
A factor that has allowed Arcangelo to be so adaptable is the ever-effective
policy of employing top-rate musicians; and, with violinist Sophie Gent and
gambist Jonathan Manson proving masters of this music’s sometimes virtuoso
demands and Thomas Dunford among the most sought-after continuo lutenists of the
moment, the standards here are as high as ever. The shifting moods of the music
are realised with taste and precision – whether dancing, indulging in earnest
chromatic twisting or yielding to exuberance (Dunford twice ends a sonata with a
rather Arabic flourish) – yet each sonata’s composure is successfully preserved.
The gamba being
gentler than the violin, the balance of attention can swing to its disadvantage,
and it seems to me that the recording could have compensated for that a little
more; Manson’s eloquent playing certainly demands a better hearing, yet on
occasion drifts even behind the lute. The lute, by the way, is also more
prominent than Cohen’s harpsichord, which may or may not be deliberate. Fine
performances nonetheless.
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