Los Dominos Florence Malgoire

« Pour le mélomane d’aujourd’hui, ces Sonates de l’Oeuvre III, élégantes comme un conte de Diderot, une toile de Boucher ou une « folie » en style rocaille des environs de Paris, demeurent un précieux témoignage du goût d’un public esthète et exigeant qui, ne l’oublions pas, faisait l’admiration et l’envie de la plupart des cours d’Europe. » (Christophe Rousset)

This is a highly subjective interpretation of Bach's often-performed set of six sonatas for violin and harpsichord, played on historical instruments. Swiss-based violinist Florence Malgoire renders Bach's violin lines almost without vibrato. Unlike other Baroque violinists who favor this sound, however, she keeps to a delicate attack in place of the usual muscular, meaty bowstrokes. Her phrasing has a sweeping quality that's oddly graceful, but sometimes she begins a phrase so subtly that Blandine Rannou's harpsichord seems to be the lead instrument, with the violin providing an accompaniment like that of an early Classical piano-and-violin sonata.

Giulio Cesare proved by far the most popular of Handel’s operas, both originally and in modern revivals. Its straightforward plot and all-star original cast drew from Handel exceptional depth and subtlety in musical characterisation and lavish orchestral colours; Cleopatra’s seductive stage orchestra – harp, theorbo and viola da gamba with muted accompaniment from the pit – is unique. René Jacobs set the standard in 1991 (on Harmonia Mundi). By comparison, this is milder, more pensive. Bowman is superbly flexible – he seems to become ever more fluent over the years – yet less powerful and imperious than Jennifer Larmore, the earlier.

Francisco Lopez Capillas was born in 1608 in Mexico City, and studied plainchant and polyphonic composition at the Royal and Pontifical University before assuming the post of chorister and second organist at Puebla Cathedral in 1641. Although most of his significant works were composed toward the end of his life–and thus well into what is generally regarded as the baroque period–the Messe de la Bataille is, like many of his other works, ambiguous in its relationship to the musical innovations that were taking place in the old world at the time.

Jean Claude Malgoire began his musical studies in his native Avignon. At the Paris Conservatoire he took first prizes in oboe and in chamber music, embarking on a brilliant career as an instrumentalist at the age of twenty, crowned by the first prize in 1968 in the Geneva International Competition. His interest in contemporary music brought a recording of music by Holliger, Castiglioni and Shinohara and in 1972 Bruno Maderna chose him as a principal in the Ensemble Européen de Musique contemporaine. He was subsquently appointed by Charles Munch as cor anglais soloist in the Orchestre de Paris.