Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: Early Music Today (06-08/2015)
Accent
ACC24298
Code-barres / Barcode : 4015023242982
Reviewer: Graham
Lock
'It's a genuine disgrace that members of the baroque fraternity adopt any
number of trifling figures with whoops of excitement, while the output of
this great violinist still remains to be rediscovered time and again. Nearly
a decade has elapsed since Reinhard Goebel lamented our, neglect of Leclair
in his CD‑notes for Harmonie Universelle's 2006 recording of the op.3
sonatas for two violins, yet even last year's 250th anniversary of Leclair’s
death ‑ a brutal, unsolved murder failed to spark a major revival of
interest, though it presumably played a part in the release of these CDs.
Leclair
was not only one of the 18th century’s greatest violinists ‑ he reportedly
'played like an angel'‑ he was also an innovative composer. According to one
writer, his many sonatas and concertos 'virtually created the French school
of violin playing’; while his music also realised François Couperin’s ideal
of the réunion des goûts, its seamless integration of Italian
virtuosity and French elegance no doubt helped by the six years Leclair
spent in Turin. His two sets of sonatas for two unaccompanied violins, op.3
and op.12, were published in 1730 and 1747 respectively. The earlier set,
easier to play and simpler in structure, probably had a pedagogical purpose,
yet makes attractive listening; the later sonatas, 'notably more complicated
and freer', says Goebel, can sound utterly entrancing.
Such is
the case in the hands of Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman, aka Harmonie
Universelle, whose new disc of the op.12 sonatas reaffirms the genial
mastery shown on their earlier recording of the op.3 set for Eloquentia.
Veterans of the European early music circuit, they sound absolutely at ease
with Leclair’s music, dancing nimbly through the quicker movements, teasing
out the slower with a beguiling tenderness, as in the fourth sonatas
haunting Largo.
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