Villa Fantome Labyrinthe

Alain Bancquart - Le Livre du Labyrinthe (2003)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 2 Cd, Covers | 536 Mb
Label: mode - Date: 2003

Bancquart's gigantic six-part opus resonates with alien textures and aching lines. Suffused with intricately hewn microtonal music, each movement, scored differently, can stand alone as a unique work. This recording captures the integral premiere. Taken sequentially, each tableau seems the most remote outpost, the next unveiling something stranger still. Occasional passages throb with B-movie queasiness, yet the peculiar scales and tones make perfect sense. Bancquart isn't some kid discovering how funky it is to play between the keys: He's a master, effortlessly devising unbelievable sonorities…

A veteran of Jordi Savall's Hespèrion XX and XXI, gambaist Marianne Muller makes her Zig Zag Territories debut with this disc of music by the great French Baroque composer Marin Marais. The repertoire is daunting: the ingenious and evocative Le Labyrinthe, the 32 virtuoso variations on Les Folies d'Espagne, and the 12-movement Suite in E minor from Marais' Second Book of Pièces de viole. These are works that require not just virtuosity, stamina, intense expressivity, and soulful beauty of tone.

Sarah Cunningham is probably the finest viol player in Britain today, though it Is as a chamber-music player rather than as a soloist that she is best known here and abroad. Her technical command of the seven-string bass viol is never in doubt on this CD; nor, for that matter, is her control of tone. She has chosen some of Marais' most familiar and demanding works on which to make her solo recording debut, thereby inviting comparisons with the previous generation of players, Wieland Kuijken and Jordi Savall.

Excellent Album from Extravagant French Pop Diva of the Big 80's. Perhaps the most original debut to come out of the French music movement of the late-'80s, "Labyrinthe" bears very little resemblance to traditional French chanson and synth pop from the likes of Les Rita Mitsouko. Instead, it provides an accessible but rough sound driven by Guesch's hoarse, snotty voice and the tight accompaniment of her backing band Encore. "Etienne" was #1 in several European countries, while the video clip (with Guesch using a chair as sexual partner) caused much uproar. As debut albums go, there's a couple of filler and uninspired tracks, and the band sometimes falls into rock cliches. Nevertheless, the funny "Let be must..", the suprisingly sinister "Bon anniversaire", and the bright pop of "C'est pas assez" are other highlights. "Labyrinthe" is rather a collection of songs (and not a very consistent album), but the dynamic performance of Guesch and her band keeps things fairly interesting.

When Richard Wagner failed to have his one-act version of Der fliegende Holländer staged at the Paris Opera, the cash-strapped composer sold a synopsis of the plot, written in broken French. This was fashioned into a proper libretto, which was then set to music by Pierre-Louis Dietsch, who enjoyed 11 performances of Le Vasseau fantôme before it was pulled from the repertoire in 1843. Ironically, Wagner's success with Der fliegende Holländer in Dresden happened shortly after that, and the expanded three-act version has remained an essential part of Wagner's canon.

In her first solo album as a singer and harpist, Arianna Savall introduces us to a repertoire from the medieval and Baroque periods performed with seven different historical harps. The music comes from three countries where the harp has held a prominent position in cultural life: Italy, France, and Spain, in which the harp experienced a flowering of unique variety and beauty. Arianna Savall with her crystalline voice and her sweet playing, reaches the depths of these distant but at the same time so timeless music.

Marcel François Paul Landowski was a French composer, biographer and arts administrator. Born at Pont-l'Abbé, Finistère, Brittany, he was the son of French sculptor Paul Landowski and great-grandson of the composer Henri Vieuxtemps. As an infant he showed early musical promise, and studied piano under Marguerite Long. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1935; in addition one of his teachers was Pierre Monteux.
Landowski's greatest musical influence was Arthur Honegger. His entire output (including five symphonies, several concertos, operas and a Mass) bears testimony to Honegger's impact. Landowski went on …..