L'assassino Del Marais

It is always a thrill to hear a performance of newly discovered music by a favourite composer, especially when it includes previously unknown versions of much loved works like Marin Marais’ La Folie The music on this disc is a selection taken from a manuscript in the Scottish National Library of 150 pieces for solo viola da gamba.

Like many of his contemporaries, Marin Marais has paid the price of his proximity to some outstandingly brilliant musicians. Between Lully and Rameau we can still cite Charpentier, Delalande, Campra and François Couperin. But what about the others? The Destouches, Mouret and Marais pale beside the stars of a fertile era which was rocked by controversy. The school of harpsichordists and organists, who were no match for Lully’s vocal art, are still represented in the repertoire of present-day performers: D’Anglebert, Lebègue, Dandrieu, Grigny and Clérambault are still played on our instruments. But Marin Marais had the misfortune not only to compose operas in Lully’s domain, but also to devote the bulk of his art to an instrument which was being eclipsed by the advance of the violin family… namely, the VIOLA DA GAMBA or the BASS VIOL. And it is only recently that we have rediscovered the specific manner of playing this instrument as well as the composers who wrote for it.

Marin Marais published his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole two years after the death of Louis XIV, establishing himself as the undisputed master of the genre and providing pieces not only for musicians who had achieved some skill on the viol but also for the most virtuoso players. Here Marais reshaped the classical forms, altering the traditional sequence for the suites and making an increasing use of character pieces. The sometimes whimsical imagery and the new freedom of form that these pieces contain reach their peak in the astonishing Suitte d'un goût étranger; these thirty or so pieces employ as yet unheard-of keys and offer a multitude of characters and representations that can tend towards the exotic. Breaking further new ground, and somewhat influenced by the Italian trio, Marais ended the Quatrième Livre with two suites for three viols, a genre he claimed to be new to France.

The first volume of Tempesta di Mare's series on Chandos, Comédie et Tragédie, offers period-style performances of orchestral music by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Féry Rebel, and Marin Marais. The orchestral suites drawn from Lully's music for Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Rebel's symphonie nouvelle Les élémens, and Marais' suite from the tragédie en musique Alcyone give a taste of theater music in the court of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and these pieces show how inventive composers were with instrumentation and their combinations of dances with dramatic scene painting. Tempesta di Mare, which is also known as the Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, gives bright and energetic performances, and the musicians have a fine sense of the swung rhythms, distinctive tone colors, and lively ornamentation in French Baroque music. The recording is clear and well-balanced, though the percussion in Lully's March for the Turkish Ceremony (track 4) is a bit startling, and the dissonant opening of Rebel's Le Chaos (track 13) has its own shock value. Highly recommended.

…All these pursuits made of the 'Pièces en trio' an unpretentious but charming work. They very faithfully resuscitate the climate of the sosiety of the time, its passion for music and, at the same time, its lack of concern for it. But above all they carry the seed of a skill in writing and of the qualities of composition that Marais was not slow to employ so as to give us other testimonies much more elaborate and much more remarkable.

Viele versuchen es, aber wenige erreichen es: das Kunststück, als Popkünstler und Alte-Musik-Experten zu gleicher Zeit authentisch zu wirken. Dass sie zu denen gehört, die es erreicht hat, macht Hille Perl zur Ausnahmekünstlerin. Mögen sie und ihr Partner Lee Santana sich auch inszenieren – in ihrem Spiel gelingt der stets schwarz gekleideten Rotweinliebhaberin eine so vollkommen natürliche Verbindung zwischen Sinnlichkeit und melancholischer Endzeitbetrachtung, dass moderne und barocke Lebenslust, heutige Weltflucht und barockes Memento mori zu einem Lebensgefühl zu verschmelzen scheinen.

The lute family, and the baroque guitar, have a wonderful solo repertoire spanning hundreds of years. Less so the gallichon, but Tommie arranged several pieces for this recording. The viola da gamba is also endowed with a rich treasure of solo works. For the first time in her career, Jenny has performed and recorded some of her favourite solo pieces, including the world premiere of a work written for her by Australian composer, Paul Cutlan. Finally, the music of Marin Marais is close to both our hearts. We have explored so many of his suites over the years and there is always a sense of achievement in committing another of the great man's works to record. Tommie would like to dedicate his recording of Mozart's Adagio to the memory of Swedish soprano Eva Nässén.

Ces suites en trio ont été gravées par d'autres ensembles très talentueux : en intégralité pour l'ensemble "Pacifica" Marais : Pièces En Trio et le "Ricercar Consort" Marin Marais : Pièces en trio pour le coucher du roi ; ou partiellement comme pour les "aux pieds du roi" Marais : Pieces en trio pour les flutes, violon et dessus de viole (1692) . Chacun de ces enregistrements à de grands mérites. Toutefois l'ensemble Amalia à mon sens, mérite dans ce registre la première place pour plusieurs raisons.

Marais's Alcione is the last great 'tragedy' in music from the reign of Louis XIV. It is a total spectacle at the crossroads of the 17th and 18th centuries, from which it takes the mythological source, it's praise of the sovereign's glory and the literary requirement to combine choreography and stage movements. Jordi Savall rediscovered this work and brought it back to life for the first stage production in Paris since 1771.