JEAN-BAPTISTE FORQUERAY

"No wonder Jean-Baptiste Forqueray is unfamiliar, a virtuoso violist credited only with arranging music by his father Antoine. In fact there’s now strong evidence that these 29 Pièces… were actually by the son - resolving in turn curious stylistic differences between them and music unquestionably by Forqueray père. Problems remained however. Jean-Baptiste’s wife made a harpsichord arrangement, yet even Forqueray’s original gamba-and-continuo score struck a modern-day gamba virtuoso, Susanne Heinrich, as arranged - strangely unwieldy, like a short-score reduction of music for a wider palette. So she and Kah-Ming Ng have scored 14 of the Pièces for up to seven players, sharing melodic interest between violin and the small pardessus de viole, whose tuning creates a vibrant ringing sonority. The result, arranged into four divertissements, is stunning.

The disc opens with ’Jupiter’, a vivid character piece, breathtakingly energetic with frenetic harpsichord octave doublings to describe his Olympian thunderbolts. Its simple yet distinctive rondeau refrain will haunt your memory for days. Another which I cannot shake off is a chaconne ’La Buisson’ - beware! This is compulsive listening.

’La Bouron’, opening the second suite, is remarkably Italianate, positively Vivaldian (and taxing the intonation of unisons between violin and fretted viol). Elsewhere, colours and character are unmistakably French: ’La Tronchin’ in dense five-part texture, played with balletic grace and stylishly decorated; the third suite dark with two gambas; a final chaconne for solo gamba and continuo engaged in charming invention - time stands still.

This is a revelatory recording marrying scholarship with vivid, risk-taking imagination - highly recommended."

Prof. George Pratt
(producer of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Spirit of the Age’)

"Oxford-based trio charivari agréable is making quite a career for itself out of the sheer resourcefulness with which it adapts (mainly French) baroque chamber music to suit its basic line-up of keyboards, lutes and viol. Here, though, it takes things further and adapts 14 of Jean-Baptiste Forqueray’s highly characterized Pièces de viole of 1747 for a number of different string-based scorings, ranging from three to seven players. The results are unusual but perfectly plausible (it has no shortage of musicological argument) and it is certainly rewarding to hear Forqueray’s deserving music opened up such lively and infectious performances."

Lindsay Kemp