Marie Fabienne Fortin

Vos enfants ont quitté le nid familial depuis belle lurette et votre maison vous semble trop grande? Vous souhaitez vous installer dans une résidence pour personnes âgées? Votre situation de vie a changé et vous voulez vivre dans un plus petit espace? Vous êtes liquidateur d'une succession ou aidez un proche à déménager? …

Yet another fine early music ensemble pops up for the holiday season, courtesy of Analekta. Masques has assembled a charming program of Christmas music from the Baroque period, which of course basically sounds like any other kind of Baroque music, but it's pleasing and spunky nevertheless. The highlights are the two sets of instrumental Noëls by Charpentier and Delalande, which present a festive garland of Christmas tunes in colorful instrumental garb, recorders well to the fore. They are delightful. Schiassi's Concerto for Strings ends with one of those wonderful pastoral numbers, thus establishing its seasonal credentials in the Corellian tradition.

A highly prolific composer, Giovanni Legrenzi practised his art in oratorios and other works for the church, as well as in opera and chamber music. In fact he explored all the musical genres of his period, taking over the baton handed on by Gabrieli and Monteverdi, and enjoying an enviable reputation among his contemporaries. Better known during his lifetime (1626-1690) for his operas rather than for his religious music, Legrenzi was widely admired and copied all over Europe.

"Johann Sebastian Bach used the recorder in two Brandenburg concertos and some twenty cantatas and oratorios, but alas, he left us no sonata with harpsichord," say Julien Martin and Olivier Fortin. Arranging chamber music for a variety of instrumental ensembles was a widespread practice in the eighteenth century. Bach himself seems to have created a number of works that did not necessarily require the use of a specific instrument. Here Julien Martin and Olivier Fortin, musical partners for many years, present the Sonata in F major, originally written for transverse flute and continuo, transcriptions of the Trio Sonata for organ No. 3 in E minor , the Partita for violin No. 2 in G minor, and the Chorale 'Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland', whose extensive ornamental flourishes elongate and transform the chorale melody to the point of rendering it unrecognisable.

The orchestral suite, sometimes simply called ‘overture’ because of the imposing dimensions of its opening movement, enjoyed great popularity in the early eighteenth century, especially in central Germany. Bach had discovered the genre in his youth and cultivated it until his late period in Leipzig. This recording assembles his four overture-suites, including the famous Suite no.2 BWV 1067, which belongs among the late works. Numerous copying errors in the instrumental parts suggest that this piece was originally written a tone lower – in A minor – and therefore probably for a solo instrument other than the transverse flute: in the present recording, this first version, reconstructed from the clues mentioned above, is performed with solo oboe.

Originaire d'une famille de musiciens lyonnais, Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764) fut, après avoir abandonné une carrière de danseur, un grand violoniste virtuose en même temps qu'un grand voyageur. De Versailles à Paris, de Londres à La Haye, il prodigua son art en jouant notamment ses Sonates pour violon seul ou ses Concertos. Sa fin fut tragique. Il mourut assassiné alors qu'il regagnait en pleine nuit son domicile."Parfaite synthèse des styles italien et français, son œuvre, précise Thomas Leconte, représente sans doute le véritable apogée des "goûts réunis" chers à François Couperin.

With this first project for Zig-Zag Territories, the musicians of the Canadian ensemble Masques under the direction of the harpsichordist Olivier Fortin demonstrate their passion for the music of the Austrian Baroque composer Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.