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Musique à Versailles Marin MARAIS (1656-1728)
Les Folies d’Espagne (1701)
[18:48] Jean-Philippe RAMEAU (1683-1764)
Musette en Rondeau [1:46]; Rigaudon [1:25]; Gigue [1:15]; Les
Sauvages (1728)[2:12]; Tambourin (1724)
[1:18]; La Follette [1:41] Marin MARAIS
Suite in d-minor [9:45] Michel-Richard DELALANDE (1657-1726)
Symphonies
de Noël [15:27] François COUPERIN (1668-1733)
Les
Barricades mystérieuses (1717) [1:30]; Sœur Monique (1722)
[3:11]; Concerto No. VI in B (1724) [10:23]
Trio Marie-Antoinette
(Hansjörg Schellenberger (oboe); Margit-Anna
Süss (baroque harp); Klas Stoll (violone))
rec. Berlin Philharmonic Kammermusiksaal, September, 1999.
DDD. CAMPANELLA
MUSICA C130090 [68:41]
If, like me, you hadn’t
come across the Campanella Musica label before, a little
information from their website will not come amiss:
Campanella Musicais a label
specializing in chamber music with the musicians being the
publishers themselves: excellent artists create their own
productions, personally responsible for every aspect of artistic
and economic competence. Under the roof of “Campanella Musica” they
participate in the distribution of a very small and exclusive
CD series which aims to present artistic profiles in a compact
programmatic context.
Recorded in 1999, designated
(P) and (C) 2000, and apparently available in the UK since
2003, this CD seems to have taken some time before being
submitted as a review copy.
The music on the CD could
all have been performed at the court of Versailles in the
late 17th and early 18th centuries,
but the claim made in the notes that the name of the performers,
Trio Marie-Antoinette, is “historically appropriate for music
of this period” stretches the meaning of the word ‘period’,
since the lady in question arrived at Versailles long after
the demise of any of these composers. Some telescoping of
logic also seems to have gone into the statement that “The
name of the ensemble ... is an echo of the name of the barock
[sic] harp, which makes its entry in the trio.”
The instruments employed,
oboe, baroque harp and violone, may well have been heard
together occasionally, but I doubt if any of the music here
was written for such an ensemble. It is a serious shortcoming
that we are offered only a sketchy rationale for the programme
and no indication of the sources of the various items or
who made the adaptations for this particular trio. The website
is no more helpful.
The performance of Marais’s Les
Folies begins slowly and tentatively, establishing
the well-known theme of La Folia, itself the subject
of countless variations in the baroque period. The playing
throughout is delicate – perhaps a little too delicate
to retain the listener’s attention in the first few variations. Played
here by, effectively, a ‘broken consort’, the music should
have more variety than in a performance by a viol consort,
but the whole effect is rather tame. In the opening variations,
this may partly, but not wholly, be laid at Marais’s door. Schellenberger’s
playing is delightful, especially in the slower variations,
and he is well supported. As the variations progress,
the performance comes more fully to life in the more vigorous
sections – positively sprightly at times – but overall
the music-making is just a shade too civilised.
By coincidence, just as
I was completing this review, I received my copy of the 2008
Proms Programme where I note that Marais’s Couplets des
Folies d’Espagne at the hands of Jordi Savall and Rolf
Lislevand on August 18th is expected to last 14
minutes, confirming my feeling that 18:48 is rather too long
for this piece. Yes, I know that Jordi Savall’s performances
are usually fast, but even so, an extra five minutes is surely
too much, despite my colleague JV’s recent enthusiastic welcome
for a recording by Ensemble Spirale including a performance
of the Folies which takes 18:14 (Zig-Zag Territoires
ZZT060801 – see review). It
isn’t just a matter of tempo so much as the three players’ failure
to project the contrasts in character and tempo which JV
rightly describes as essential components of this work.
On a recommendable recording
of the Pièces de viole du second livre, members of
Phatasm on BIS-CD909 take 16:46 for Les Folies; Le
Spectre de la Rose take a similar 16:38 on Naxos 8.553081. Either
of these CDs or the Zig-Zag recording would make a better
introduction to Marais than the Campanella Musica CD, as
would another Spectre de la Rose CD of music by Marais and
Sainte-Colombe on Naxos 8.550750. Then, of course, there
is the incomparable recording of the soundtrack from Tous
les Matins du Monde on Avie AV9821, a 5-star Musicweb
recommendation (see review). The
Naxos CDs are offered at bargain price, as also is a recommendable Harmonia
Mundi D’Abord recital (HMA195 5248 – see review). Even
better value is a Virgin Veritas 2-CD set at around £8.50
in the UK (4 82082 2 – see review).
The Rameau pieces, from
the Pièces de clavecin and its successors (1724-41)
receive stylish performances, with the harp replacing the
right hand part and the violone the left. As in the Marais,
the prevailing mood is rather tame. The Rigaudon could
have been more lively, the Gigue certainly should
have been. Les Sauvages come over as tame denizens
of the court rather than of the jungle – these are noble
savages indeed, though in a different sense from those described
in Montaigne’s famous essay Des Cannibales and his
probably source, Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un Voyage,
of a generation earlier. This performance lacks the “well-judged
swing and fluidity” which my colleague PS found in Sophie
Yates’s version on Chandos CHAN0708 – see review. Tambourin fails
to evoke that instrument as effectively as the harpsichord
could, pointing to the inadequacy of the harp and violone
as substitutes, despite the final thwack with which Stoll
rounds off the piece. (See Sophie Yates again, on CHAN0659,
or Trevor Pinnock on Avie AV2056.) La Follette, however,
is suitably fey-like. Scores of Les Sauvages and Tambourin are
available from the icking music website.
The Marais Suite opens
with a quiet Prélude. Once again, elegance is the
keynote of the performance here and throughout the following
dance movements.
The Symphonie by
Delalande (also frequently spelled de Lalande, a composer
better known for his vocal music) was originally written
for the organ, in which form it is available on a CD of Christmas
Organ Music on the Farao label (F100205). The composition
of such pieces was common in France in the 17th century – see
my reviews of Daquin’s Nouveau Livre de Noëls, CDH55319,
and Puer nobis nascitur, CC72234). This
music does sound rather out of place deprived of its Christmas
context, though attractive enough to anyone who does not
know the underlying tune to make the Christmas connection. Anyone
who has heard Charpentier’s famous Messe de Minuit,
however, will immediately recognise many of the tunes.
The question also arises
whether this music lends itself to the instrumental arrangements
here. Good as these performances are, it really needs the
more extensive palette and greater weight of the organ. Some
sections come off well, however, such as track 16 Voicy
le jour solemnel, track 17, Je me suis levé and
the lively track 21, Notre bon père Noël.
François Couperin, sometimes
called le Grand, was the most talented member of a
family almost as musically prodigious as the Bach family. les
Barricades mystérieuse and Sœuer Monique come
from his keyboard Suites or Pièces de clavecin; they
areavailable on many anthology CDs. The harp provides
a reasonable substitute for the harpsichord in Süss’s evocative
performance of Barricades and Sœur Monique. Scores
of both pieces are available at icking music.
Concert No.VI is taken
from les Goûts réunis, a follow-up to the four Concerts
Royaux, written in the last years of Louis XIV for performance
at court. Couperin’s attempt in les Goûts réunis to
reconcile the competing claims of the Italian and French
styles would have made more sense if music by Lully had been
included on this CD alongside that of his great rival Rameau. These
concertos have never been as popular as the original Concerts
royaux and there appears to be currently no competition
in this concerto. KM was not impressed by Christophe Rousset’s
now deleted recording of the complete 2-CD set of concertos
from les Goûts réunis (Decca 458 271-2 – see review).
The opening movement of
the concerto is performed suitably gravement et mésuré,
with the oboe bearing the tune, the harp and violone offering
discrete support. This music is presented on two staves
and offered as suitable for a variety of instruments; the
oboe is especially well suited to this concerto. The Allemande is
lively, but the players bear in mind the injunction to observe temps
légers. In the stately Sarabande the tone of
the oboe is especially apt. A lively Air de diable and
an elegant Sicilienne go some way to resolving my
reservations about the programme as a whole – reservations
which, in any case, are not serious.
If you are looking for
an introduction to Couperin’s music, the starting place that
I would recommend would be the Apothéose de Corelli and
the Apothéose de Lully were it not that, incredibly,
there appear to be no versions of these works currently in
the catalogue apart from a version of the Apothéose de
Corelli on a bargain-price collection of Italian music
conducted by Fabio Biondi and Rinaldo Alessandini. (Naïve
V5100) Look out for dealers who still have copies of the
mid-price Savall (Astrée ES9947) or Gardiner (Erato) versions – or
wait for them to return, as they surely must.
The overall effect of
these performances is to present Versailles as a place of
great elegance. That is our modern view of the place, but
it is to some extent coloured by the passage of time – the
real palace was so lacking in sanitary facilities that the
courtiers had to relieve themselves in corners of the corridors
or even in the elegant Hall of Mirrors. See Robin Briggs, Early
Modern France, 1560-1715 (Oxford: OUP, 1977, 1998) p.153
for a down-to-earth characterisation of Versailles as “the
background for [Louis XIV’s] gloomy years of defeat” and
a place where “several thousand people were cooped up together
... with gambling and adultery as their main distractions.” Briggs’ assertion
that “the establishment of the court at Versailles coincided
with the close of the great period of artistic patronage” [ibid.]
is somewhat at odds with the starry-eyed version of Versailles
in the Campanella Musica notes. Not that music cannot flourish
in insanitary circumstances, as witness Beethoven’s well-known
problems in that department.
The recording is bright
and immediate throughout.
The stiff cardboard gatefold
presentation is a cut above the average, though the website
rather gilds the lily:
The products of Campanella
Musica are not packaged like the usual CD plastic “jewel
cases”. They are a result of finest artistry of bookbinding:
elaborate handwork creates small book wrappers which form
the case of the CD. The special artistic quality of the
recording is adequately partnered by its presentation.
The CD is a tight fit
in the right-hand section; I can foresee danger of its becoming
scratched with repeated use.
The notes are rather brief – they
don’t even give the dates of the composers. The English
version, apparently the work of an Anglophone, is comprehensible
but often awkwardly literal. The spelling ‘barock’ is hardly
idiomatic in UK or US English. Surely, too, the English
notes should translate the description of the Marais Folies as “a
set of variations” rather than the meaningless “a variation
movement”. (An over-literal rendering of “in Form eines
Variationsatzes.”)
Detailed biographies of
the three performers are given – would that the notes on
the music had been so detailed. Margit-Anna Süss and Hansjörg
Schellenberger have both made a number of distinguished recordings;
no details of their instruments are given, other than the
indication on the front cover that Süss plays a ‘Barockharfe’ and
that Klaus Stoll, the first double-bass player with the
Berlin Philharmonic, plays a four-stringed violone dating
from 1610.
The track details on the
back cover are hard to read – very small print in white on
a light-grey background. Allemande is correctly spelled
for track 9, but mis-spelled as Allemende for track
32.
I have already complained
about the lack of detail in the notes. Only Les Folies
d’Espagne receives any attention – and even this soon
wanders off the point to discuss the variation form as employed
by other composers, including Rachmaninov. (In what sense
the Rachmaninov Corelli Variations qualify as historische
Verkennung, awkwardly translated as “the historically
mistaken pattern”, is not made clear.)
As a sampler of the music
of late-17th- and early 18th-century
France, decently performed and well recorded, this CD will
do well enough – an entertaining hour of refined music-making – but
the single-composer recordings which I have recommended will
serve better, especially as they offer the original instrumentation.
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