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EARLY MUSIC REVIEW
Quiet Pain, Gentle Rapture April 19, 2002
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By Kerry McCarthy
The three musicians of Les Violes du Roi entranced their Palo Alto audience Friday evening with a concert of mostly French music for viola da gamba and theorbo. It was no surprise to read in the program notes that Paolo Pandolfo, gambist and leader of the ensemble, began his performing career as a jazz musician. He played with a rare spontaneity that never interfered with his technical skill and the other players followed with sensitivity and wit. To hear any one of them play alone would be a delight; the three together made for a fine evening.
These stringed instruments are among the most expressive colors in the palette of early chamber music. The French gambist Sainte-Colombe (of "Tous les Matins du Monde" fame) was renowned for his ability to "imitate any nuance of the human voice, from the sigh of a young woman to the cry of an old man." Friday's concert covered a wide range of human expression, from pain and lamentation to the cavorting of wood-sprites and joyful courtly dances.
Second gambist Guido Balestracci played well throughout the evening. Some of the best moments were the unaccompanied duets between him and Pandolfo, notably the Sarabande from Couperin's Treizième concert à 2 violes. Observing the rapport between the two players, their gesture and eye contact, was like watching a single musician with two instruments and four hands at his disposal. The results were breathtaking unison ornaments and polished phrases, with pianissimo cadences that literally vanished away into thin air.
Thomas Boysen accompanied most of the pieces on theorbo, or bass lute. In his hands this most subtle of continuo instruments was a joy to hear in its own right. The concert included a piece for solo theorbo, Les Sylvains de M. Couperin, a playful and haunting musical evocation of the gods of the forest. It was an unexpected treat to hear Boysen play on his own, and we can hope he returns to the West Coast from his native Norway as a solo performer. The players easily negotiated the kaleidoscopic shifts of tone throughout the concert, despite the occasional lapse in tuning due to over-exuberance. Marche Persane dite La Savigny explored the rich lower registers of the gamba, while Pandolfo used it almost as a percussion instrument in La Georgienne, striking the strings with exquisite violence. The gentler La Guitarre began with an unexpected pizzicato passage. The second half included Bach's D-minor trio sonata, BWV 531 — a real contrast with an evening of French music, but played with the same expressive intensity as the rest of the program. Marais' Tableau de l'Opération de la Taille, played near the end of the concert, is one of the most bizarre pieces of program music to come out of the Baroque period — or indeed any period. It depicts in vivid detail the stages of a gallstone operation, performed in the days before anesthesia: trembling at the sight of the equipment, clamping down of the arms and legs, "serious reflections" by the patient, the incision, the removal of the stone, relief at having survived. Marais, who presumably underwent the operation himself at some point in his life, interspersed his score with brief, brutal sentences describing the process. These were read to great effect by Pandolfo himself between the short musical figures. The group's much-requested encore was a polonaise by Marais, the essence of simplicity after the brief concluding fireworks of Le Tourbillon. (Kerry McCarthy, a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Stanford, is a performer, conductor, and student of early music.) ©2002 Kerry McCarthy, all rights reserved |