Tamestit

A precursor in this field as in so many others, Telemann gave the viola its very first masterpieces, immediately establishing it as a solo instrument in its own right. Alongside Sabine Fehlandt and the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Antoine Tamestit pays splendid tribute to this pioneering music, which blends melodic charm and contrapuntal rigour into an organic whole.

Magisterially rounding off one of the nineteenth century’s most remarkable bodies of chamber music, Brahms’s two Sonatas op.120 call for a virtuosity wholly dedicated to their extraordinary lyricism.

Here the diva is the viola! How did the viola move from the status of ‘dramatic contralto among instrumental voices’ (to quote the critic Henri Blanchard) to ‘a character of nobility and languor’, according to Georg Kastner’s treatise on instrumentation (1837)?

Going well beyond mere historical interest, this album unveils the charms of a repertoire that delighted Parisian concert halls and salons throughout the 19th century. It demonstrates how the viola finally emerged from the violin’s shadow thanks to virtuoso playing, now resuscitated by the talent of Antoine Tamestit and Cédric Tiberghien in pieces which offer much more than the exquisite languors of bel canto. Italian for 'beautiful singing' or 'beautiful song', the term remains vague and ambiguous but is commonly used to evoke a lost singing tradition; in this case the famed singing tone of Antoine Tamestit's viola, a 1672 Stradivarius, loaned by the Habisreutinger Foundation.

The brainchild of Antoine Tamestit, this recording stems from a long-standing collaboration with his recital partner, Jörg Widmann. Over the course of his new viola concerto, Widmann the composer lets his soloist move freely about the stage, producing fresh orchestral colours within a novel structure: combining humour with earnestness, ferocity with delicacy, Widmann's unfailing sense of theatre serves to highlight the work's haunting beauty. Whether embedded in the orchestral fabric or exploring the more intimate pieces on this programme, the violist comes out a hero, hands down!

Antoine Tamestit and his artistic partner Masato Suzuki, a soloist in the famous Bach Collegium Japan, have immersed themselves in Bach’s three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord in order to give a sublime interpretation of them on the viola – both instruments use the same alto clef, even if the projection of the sound is entirely different. So this is no transcription, but leaves the artists in total freedom to rediscover with delight these all too rarely played masterpieces!

Unfixed dimensions, a paucity of repertoire, and that which there was being dull and unchallenging. These were the reasons that, as the violin rose to become the undisputed darling of the solo concerto and trio sonata in early eighteenth-century Italy, the viola became the instrument that no instrumentalist with an ounce of ambition beyond providing middle-voice orchestral padding was going to pick up. So, as much as the world would undoubtedly be a less jolly place without the viola jokes spawned by this ravishingly lovely alto instrument’s ignoble beginnings, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to eighteenth-century Germany, and in particular to Georg Philipp Telemann, for spotting its potential early enough for today’s viola players to nevertheless have some top-drawer Baroque repertoire to sink their teeth into.

The brainchild of Antoine Tamestit, this recording stems from a long-standing collaboration with his recital partner, Jörg Widmann. Over the course of his new viola concerto, Widmann the composer lets his soloist move freely about the stage, producing fresh orchestral colours within a novel structure: combining humour with earnestness, ferocity with delicacy, Widmann's unfailing sense of theatre serves to highlight the work's haunting beauty. Whether embedded in the orchestral fabric or exploring the more intimate pieces on this programme, the violist comes out a hero, hands down!