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A whole lot is promised in this double-disc release. The words ‘world premiere recording’ are used eight times in the track-listing, and it also includes, apparently, the ‘world premiere recording on historical instruments’ of the Andante from Vivaldi’s Concerto in E (‘per Anna Maria’). It’s unnecessary clamour, really; I’ve come to associate Théotime Langlois de Swarte with utter stylishness, and thus don’t need much convincing to tuck into some excellently performed Baroque music. Given that his album of Vivaldi, Locatelli and Leclair won Gramophone’s Recording of the Month (3/22), Langlois de Swarte is not really a rising star any more, though there is something slightly underbaked about some of these interpretations. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of vitality and lyricism to enjoy.
There are those hold-on-to-your-hat movements that Langlois de Swarte is just so good at. Go to the Presto of Vivaldi’s Concerto in E flat, Il ritiro (RV256). The chomping vigour of Le Consort has me wondering at the total tally of snapped gut strings in this project. The plucked playing from Thibaut Roussel and Gabriel Rignol on theorbo is particularly groovy, and the amount of fun clearly had by harpsichordist Justin Taylor is surely criminal. Langlois de Swarte then emerges as the coolest cowboy in town, rosin flying everywhere.
Sections of sweetness sit nose to nose with bravura, and the subtleties sneaked into sequences and repetitions are a pleasure to detect.
If you’re still in party mood, head now to the Diminutions on the Forlana of Vivaldi’s Bassoon Concerto RV478. There’s a dizzying amount of funk in this transcription; Langlois de Swarte exuberantly spirals in diminutions that escalate in virtuosity (bravo to musicologist Olivier Fourés for his various reconstructions on these discs). Hold on tight, as unexpected timbres soon arrive: a Concerto for two horns is announced with drums, and a wind machine moves us from battlefield to furious sea-storm. But it’s not all crash and bang: in the central Adagio of the Concerto in E flat (RV250), Langlois de Swarte treats us to a true piano that is luscious in its frailty.
Any niggles that I find with these interpretations are that they tend towards the too inventive. Langlois de Swarte is consistently colourful and capricious: ornamentation feels occasionally battered blue rather than soulful, and certain textbook Vivaldi passages could do with a simpler rhetorical stance. Perhaps it’s a cliché that Langlois de Swarte is doing well to contest. |
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