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Reviewer: Barry
Brenesal I had my suspicions, when Zig-Zag released a 7-CD retrospective late in 2012 of recordings by both Amandine Beyer (Gli Incogniti) and Chiari Banchini (Ensemble 415), that both artists and their performing groups were soon to leave the label. (Though there’s a lot more in Zig-Zag’s back catalog, so we probably haven’t seen the last of these reissues.) I’ve been wrong before as often as I’m right about such matters, but in this instance you can just call me Nostradamus. (Of course you won’t, but I already knew that.) It is good, though, to see Beyer and Gli Incogniti releasing an album on Harmonia Mundi, where hopefully it will be the first of many. Theirs are spirited readings of all the works in question, though never insensitive to tempo markings or the need for flexible phrasing. The très lentement movement in La superbe, for example, scores its points by means of stretching time subtly before the resolution of all cadences, rather than by adopting a consistently slow approach. And when it comes to the descriptive movements, such as that in L’apothéose de Corelli when the composer falls asleep, it is the length of the accented notes presented in imitation that tell the story, rather than a dragging tempo. The no-nonsense timing tells its own story, as well: 2:14, as compared to 3:20 in the Ricercar Consort’s reading (Mirare 150), which I described in my review of that performance as “truly somnolent.” And while timings are usually poor markers for interpretation in and of themselves, this instance makes its point. There’s one occasion where Gli Incogniti’s preference for energy comes a-cropper. I can understand that the tempo chosen for the fifth movement of L’apothéose de Lully, depicting the rumors of Lully’s contemporaries, is taken as quickly as possible to give a sense of incessant chatter, but at 166 bpm, Harmonia Mundi hopefully had a fire extinguisher in the room. Yes, it works, but at the expense of an unsettled, intermittently harsh tone, and one note that goes badly awry. Every other version I’ve heard clusters in the 130–145 bpm range, such as the Ricercar Consort at 142, the Kuijkens (now on Sony Seon 62941) at 144, and Les Ombres (Ambronay 301) at 135. If Les Ombres is simply too relaxed—a feature of the group’s performances I commented upon in a review of their recent Telemann quartets recording (Mirare 255)—the others achieve breathlessness by virtue of allowing Couperin’s insistent, reiterative chords to speak for themselves at a reasonable pace. What Gli Icognito realized so well in depicting Corelli’s sleep, they chose to neglect in the case of Lully’s rumors. But it
is a rare slip. These are lively but insightful performances, with none of
the jitters that afflicted numerous performances of Baroque-era music in a
couple of decades ago. They are fully alive to Couperin’s music-painting:
The tragic majesty of La Sultane’s opening movement has seldom sounded so
stately and dark-toned, though Francesco Romano’s theorbo divisions prevent
it from bogging down. Nor do these musicians miss the wit in the imitative
entries of the muses awakening Corelli, clear yet well-defined here, like a
cascade of silver trumpets. With excellent sound, strongly recommended. | |
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