Forqueray, A: Suite No. 1 in D minor

‘La Gamme (et autres morceaux de simphonie)’ heralds the return of Sonnerie to the trio format and marks their debut recording on Linn Records.

The all-French programme of music by composers Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray recalls the Songs of the Auvergne and the beautiful French countryside.

Trio Sonnerie delivers an expertly phrased and highly nuanced performance of Marias’ La Gamme.

Marais’ contemporary Forqueray provides a welcome addition to the programme. His own prowess on the viol inspired his fiendishly virtuosic Suite No. 1 which stretched the performers to achieve new heights.

Each performer has the opportunity to shine with the clean, crisp lines leaving no room for anything other than top notch playing.

Trio Sonnerie (Monica Huggett director & violin, Emilia Benjamin viola da gamba and James Johnstone harpsichord) is one of the longest established and most highly regarded chamber groups working in Europe today.

Trio Sonnerie and Sonnerie, its alter ego, has made countless recordings and played in most national and international early music festivals.

The musicians bring to this repertoire ‘playing of real elegance’ (The Independent) and ‘one could even go as far as to say musical bliss!’ (The Times).

This first disc from the muso label features the young early music generation in France.

Julien Léonard, one of the finest gamba players of his generation, champions these works with brio and elan. He is accompanied by Thomas Dunford on theorbo and François Guerrier on harpsichord. A fantastic first disc for this dynamic trio.

In the early 17th century, the golden age of the viola da gamba, Antoine Forqueray was a musician at the court of Louis XIV and the young rival of a certain Marin Marais. Jean-Baptiste, Antoine’s son, studied the viol with his father and became a renowned virtuoso. He had, however, a singular relationship with his father, no doubt on account of the latter’s robust character. Two years after his father’s death, Jean-Baptiste brought out a posthumous edition of his father’s works, himself adding the continuo bass line, and completing certain suites with his own compositions. Hence the uncertainty that continues to mark these superb pieces with regard to their true paternity.

Although already recorded by today’s leading viol players: Jordi Savall, Paolo Pandolfo, Wieland Kuijken, this is nonetheless the first recording of these Suites with a continuo bass comprising a theorbo and a harpsichord. Indeed, though they are generally performed by a consort of two viols and a harpsichord (as suggested by Jean-Baptiste on his manuscript), Julien Léonard notes that, “like his father, Jean-Baptiste mainly appeared on his own or with a harpsichord.

We have therefore taken up the challenge of forming a three-part consort, with a lute and not a second bass viol, in order to give even greater variety of sound and to clarify the discourse even more. With this idea ever in mind, several pieces are performed solely by the viol and the harpsichord, the viol and the lute or the viol on its own”.

Supported by warm sound recording, the talented trio of Musicall Humors underscores the character of each of these pieces, and enables one to plunge with delectation into this first opus of muso. A magnificent premiere for a new label!

New recordings made in 2008/9.

Booklet essay by the artist.

An ideal introduction for those wishing to explore this important musical dynasty from the Baroque period.

This 2CD set aims to give the listener a good idea of the range of music composed by a remarkable musical dynasty, the Forqueray family. They were a family of organists, viol players and harpsichordists. They were every bit as remarkable as the other great musical dynasties, the Bendas, Stamitzs, Bachs, and the Strauss family.

The most famous member of the Forqueray family (their Johann Sebastian) was Antoine, who was born in 1672, a virtuoso gambist. His output forms the backbone of the French repertoire for this instrument. None of his music was published during his lifetime, and his son Jean-Baptiste (born 1699), another viol player, devoted his time to publishing his father’s works. Michel, born in 1681, and Nicolas-Gilles, born in 1703, were superb keyboard players. This set offers a rare chance to hear the music of all four composers, centred around characterful suites for harpsichord and viole da gamba but including songs.

In 2001, Blandine Rannou began her recording career with the complete harpsichord pieces of Jean-Philippe Rameau, the eminent eighteenth-century French composer and harpsichordist. She has since recorded the foremost German master of the same era, Johann Sebastian Bach (the French Suites, the English Suites, the Toccatas), and excerpts from L’Art de toucher le clavecin by François Couperin, another giant of the early eighteenth-century French school.

Her trajectory continues, taking her further into the territory of the great French harpsichord composers, with the virtuosity and expressive power of Jean-Baptiste Forqueray’s transcriptions of his father Antoine’s pieces for viola da gamba. Forqueray published these pieces in this form in 1747, but also for solo harpsichord (‘Mises en Pièces de Clavecin’). There is nothing especially astonishing in this: we know just how widespread recourse to transcription was at the time (‘these pieces can be played on . . .’). In fact, any piece for treble and basso continuo can be very naturally and easily played (‘reduced’?) on the harpsichord: the melody in the right hand, the bass and the figured chords in the left hand or shared between the two hands. In the case of pieces for the viol, however, the process is less straightforward, and undoubtedly more exciting, for several reasons: - The viol and its accompaniment share the same tessitura.