Destinées
Sophie de Bardonnéche (violin), Lucile Boulanger (viola da gamba), Justin Taylor (harpsichord)
rec. 2024, Église Allemande de Paris, France
Reviewed as a 16/44 download
Alpha Classics 1078 [68]
It is my opinion that we are living in a golden age for recorded classical music. It seems every month brings new discoveries, insightful and thought-provoking performances on disc that open-up for us new worlds and inspire us to take new and exciting journeys in our listening habits.
When I started collecting records 35 years ago the choices on offer to a collector seemed enormous. We had our Gramophone magazine and our Penguin Guides to help us in our buying decisions and after twenty years or so joyfully discovering the repertoire it seemed we had made it, we’d finally “built our library”.
The world of classical music isn’t that easily circumnavigated, however, and how wonderful that is. If you are willing to listen and learn there are many record companies and inspiring artists like those on this disc, ready and willing to take us on amazing journeys. I hope after reading this review you might embark on this one.
It is important to state first that though this disc represents her debut as a solo artist, the violinist Sophie de Bardonnèche is no beginner. Having played for Les Arts Florissants she co-founded France based Le Consort with harpsichordist Justin Taylor, Théotime Langlois de Swarte and others. Readers may have already sampled their 2023 disc of Nicola Matteis, Purcell and the mysterious Mrs Philharmonica amongst other offerings on the Alpha label (review).
In this record, Sophie Bardonnèche, Justin Taylor and the wonderful gamba player Lucile Boulanger create an entertaining program of French sonatas, dances and overtures by no fewer than 10 women composers form the time of Louis XIV and XV centred of course around the music of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre.
Jacquet de La Guerre sounds as if she was an amazing woman. A child prodigy from a highly musical family, she first started mixing it with the Sun King and his Versailles set at the age of five. There were plenty of opportunities for her in this enlightened world and her opera Céphale et Procis premiered in 1694 was the first by a female composer to appear on the Paris stage. Vying with works by Marais, Desmarest and Charpentier and with a public still pining for their much-lamented Lully, it didn’t exactly win the success she may have hoped for but as you can hear on Reinaud van Mechelen’s recent recording of it on Château de Versailles (you see what I mean about this being a “golden age” for us) it is a major work of art without any doubt.
In Summer 2023, Scotland’s Dunedin Consort presented a program of three of her Cantates Bibliques (Judith, Rachel and Susanne) that toured to York and London. Bardonnèche here includes two sonatas from the reasonably well known 1707 collection of six, as well as an earlier unpublished sonata. Louis XIV praised the works and it is easy to see why. Inventive and varied, they provide Bardonnèche with a great opportunity to show off her phrasing, her tone and her lovely instrument (Guarneri? The notes don’t say). Lucile Boulanger and Justin Taylor are no mere accompanists and both artists have ample opportunities to shine throughout the sonatas. Taylor switches to organ for the rarer sonata they found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
After Céphale, Jacquet de La Guerre experienced the horror of losing her ten-year-old son, her husband and both her parents. Alone and after a period of silence, she began to compose again and it is from those days that the D minor and A minor sonatas come. Bardonnèche in her notes says she can well hear her sadness, transfigured in music. Perhaps you will, too, maybe in the Aria movements of tracks 9 or 25.
Incidentally the D minor sonata, the Fifth of the collection is preceded by way of an introduction with a short prelude in the same key for harpsichord. This is neat programming which brings me finally to the other ladies also featured on this record. Mademoiselle Duval followed Jacquet de la Guerre in being the next woman to have her opera staged in Paris (also recorded by Château de Versailles in 2023, review). Dances from this work Les Génies feature on the disc alongside overtures, airs, preludes and minuets that will warm your heart on a cold Autumnal or Winter evening.
Produced and edited by the experienced Hughes Deschaux, the recording is warm and close. As well as admiring Bardonnèche’s fiddling, by the end I am also impressed by the breath control (you’ll see what I mean at the start of track 16, for example).
The sonatas of Jacquet de La Guerre have been recorded before, of course. I re-listened this morning to selected pieces in both Florence Malgoire/Les Dominos and Stéphan Dudermel/La Rêveuse recordings on Ricercar and Mirare respectively. Anyone wanting to explore the 1707 sonatas further than the two presented here may look at those discs with confidence, but the extra items by the mostly forgotten women of France, some of which are receiving their first recordings, are nice to have too and contribute to another excellent record.
Philip Harrison
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Contents
Anne-Madeleine Guesdon de Presles (1687-?)
Ariette dans le goût nouveau
Elisabeth-Louise Papavoine (c.1720-1793)
Tempête – Le Cabriolet
Mademoiselle Laurent (fl.1690)
Premier air – Le Concert
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729)
Sonata in D minor (1707)
Anne or Marguerite Bocquet (?-after 1660)
Prélude en ré majeur
Françoise-Charlotte de Menetou (1679-1745)
Gavotte – Airs sérieux à deux
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729)
Sonata in A minor (manuscript)
Madame La Chausseé (fl.1712)
Menuet
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729)
Prélude in A minor (Pièces de Clavecin Book 2)
Sonata in A minor (1707)
Mademoiselle Duval (c.1718-c.1775)
Rondeau – Les Génies
Marie-Christine Fumeron (1720-1756)
Rondeau – Le Triomphe de l’amour et de l’hymen idylle
Mademoiselle Laurent (fl.1690)
Overture and Gigue – Le Concert
Madame Talon (fl.1695)
Menuet
Mademoiselle Duval (c.1718-c.1775)
Sarabande and Passacaille – Les Génies
