Godard

French avant garde jazzman Michel Godard is one of the world's leading players of the serpent, a Renaissance wind instrument, ancestor of the tuba and which was first used to accompany Gregorian chant. The instrument's connection to the sacred is wonderfully rendered on his latest album Awakening recorded with Azerbaijan's Alim Qasimov.

Howard Shelley directs the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra from the piano in this latest volume of The Romantic Piano Concerto series. As ever, they perform unknown music with consummate style and deep understanding, making the best possible case for the works. We have reached Volume 63 and the works of French composer Benjamin Godard, a figure who is almost totally forgotten today. He is described by Jeremy Nicholas in his booklet note as ‘a composer who combines the sentimental melodic appeal of Massenet with the fecundity and technical facility of Saint-Saëns’.

The Castel del Monte near Ruvo di Puglia, Southern Italy, was the last and most beautiful building of Frederick II (1194-1250), Roman emperor and King of Sicily. It dominates the Apulian landscape like a white crystal, a fata morgana beyond time and space whose original purpose will probably be a mystery forever. When German producer Achim Hebgen and French musician Michel Godard visited the castle together, they felt there should be music created in and for the building - music that is simultaneously in the past, the present and the future. Cooperating with some of the finest musicians from Italy, France and Switzerland (most of them known from the project La Banda), they imagined a timeless musical synthesis based on old forms (e.g. chaconne, folia, tarantella), yet open to the inspiring eternal atmosphere of the mysterious Castel del Monte.

La commistione, anzi la collaborazione tra musica classica e jazz è sempre stata al centro del lavoro di Michel Godard e aveva già trovato momenti di realizzazione esemplare - ad esempio, nello splendido Castel del Monte, uscito per la Enja nel 2000. Ecco, con questo Archangelica, un altro capitolo della ricerca godardiana, stavolta scaturente da una curiosa combinazione di elementi: l’invito a collaborare con un ensemble barocco, sulla base delle Leçons des ténèbres di Marc-Antoine Charpentier, in occasione di uno spettacolo tratto da un romanzo fantastico di Nancy Huston.