Baroque Italy still conceals many works that are too rarely performed. Here, ensemble Le Palais royal brings together Lotti's Credo, Rubino's Lauda Jerusalem, Vivaldi's Laetatus sum and Scarlatti's splendid Stabat Mater. Brilliant, virtuosic and richly ornamented, these pieces were composed for festivities and celebrations, and reflect the effervescence and opulence of the Italian cities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Far from the smooth, cold marble, the ensemble's performance on period instruments reveals all the asperities, reliefs and volumes of a language and music that it sculpts like a colourful and sensual material.
Rameau on the piano? It's not altogether unheard of – there were a handful of classic recordings made by Robert Casadesus back in 1952 – but, despite many recordings of Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti on the piano in the digital age, there's been precious little Rameau on the piano until this Angela Hewitt recording of three complete suites from 2006. By choosing the Suite in E minor from the Pièces de clavecin of 1731 plus the Suites in G minor and A minor from Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin, Hewitt has for the most part stayed away from the more evocatively titled works and stuck to the standard stylized Baroque dance forms of the allemande, courante, and gigue. Justly celebrated for her cool and clean Bach recordings, this strategy works well for Hewitt. Without seeming to resort to the sustain or the mute pedal, she floats Rameau's lines and melodies, and without seeming to exaggerate the accents or dynamics, she gives Rameau's rhythms a wonderful sense of lift. In the deliberately evocative movements from the G minor Suite – "La poule," "Les sauvages," and especially "L'egiptienne" – Hewitt seems to bring less to the music – her interpretations are remarkably straight – and to get less out of it – her performances are remarkably bland.
Canadian pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre performs works for piano by Maurice Ravel, recorded on an Erard piano built in 1854. "The concept and performance of a work are affected by the instrument one plays," says Jean-Philippe Sylvestre. "To bring out the Baroque character of two pieces, Le Tombeau de Couperin and Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, I wanted a piano with harpsichord-like articulation and sonority. That is why I decided to record this album on an Erard, a very special piano whose sonority and vibrations recreate the sounds, soul and mood of the time of Ravel and of the first Impressionists." Jean-Philippe Sylvestre has appeared at the prestigious Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, plus all the major concert halls across Europe as well as the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He is a regularly invited soloist with the Orchestre Metropolitain, the Orchestre symphonique de Quebec, the Orchestre symphonique de Laval, and the Orchestre symphonique de Longueuil.
Faure's outpout for the piano is prodigious, but the intensely introspective nature of his music has eluded performers and audience alike. Thankfully, pianists like Collard have made this music available to the public. Collard's Faure is buoyant, lyrical, youthful and therefore somewhat straight forward, yet it is an approach that rescues this music from sentimentality, especially in those written during Faure's early period. For example, when compared to Paul Crossley, whose Valses-Caprice stretches rhythmic freedom beyond good taste, Collard's no-nonsense reading brings out the vitality of these exquisite pieces. If you like Chopin already but are not familiar with Faure, this would be a good introduction.
Trio Viret, retour vers le futur Miracle de l’improvisation collective, ivresses des métamorphoses, le trio de Jean- Philippe Viret vient de fêter ses 20 ans et s’invente de nouveaux possibles. A l’image du trio de Bill Evans qui, au début des années 1960, a révolutionné l’esthétique du trio jazz en remettant en cause le principe du solo accompagné, Jean-Philippe Viret, Edouard Ferlet et Fabrice Moreau ont axé leur jeu sur l’écoute, l’échange, le dialogue, l’interplay. Profondeur du discours, équilibre des voix, cohésion d’ensemble, architectures, chaque musicien, affranchi de toute idée d’ordre et de hiérarchie, réinvente sa relation à l’autre à chaque instant dans un trilogue magnifique. Ainsi, simplement, naturellement, un chant s’invente et se déploie. Nouvel avatar, nouvelle métamorphose du trio Viret, l’adjonction d’un deuxième batteur qui n’est autre qu’Antoine Banville avec qui le trio a débuté. Deux batteries, la formule a un goût d’inédit. C’est un gage de nouveauté, de fraîcheur pour la musique pleine de grâce et de fluidité organique de ce groupe décidément pas comme les autres.
The music on this 2-disc set and its companion 'Vol 2' set is among the loveliest chamber music you can find anywhere, at least to my mind. Most people know Faure for his gentle 'Requiem,' but anyone wanting to explore the melody-rich world of late 19th-century French Romanticism can't go wrong with these recordings. All of this music is utterly non-flashy and breathtakingly beautiful, never cloying or oversweet like so many works of this period. Faure, an essentially old fashioned guy, was a consummate craftsman and an imaginative melodist.
In the music of Erik Satie, the sublime and the ridiculous reside in such tantalizingly close proximity that it's useless to try to separate them–which may, after all, be the point. For example, what can one say about 'Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear' other than there are really seven of them and regardless what fruit they may sound or look like they comprise a set of dances as disarming as any in piano literature? Fortunately, the case is well made in the performances of Pascal Rogé and Jean-Philippe Collard, who bring just the right balance of lightness and weight, wit, and beauty and plainness to the music.