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GRAMOPHONE (01/2022)
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Audax
ADX13782



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Reviewer: Charlotte Gardner

How do you reconcile the nearchaotic theatrical rhetoric and flashy bravura of the Italian violin concerto with the greater subtlety, intimacy and elegance of French expression? And why do so anyway? That was the dual question on French musical lips at the start of the 18th century, because whereas the Italian violin concerto swept triumphantly through the rest of Europe, France itself was feeling decidedly n’importe quoi … about it. Partly because of the aforementioned difference in aesthetic tastes. Partly because France still felt more vanille than chocolat en générale about the violin and instrumental music; and when there was little demand for virtuoso solo violin performance, there was a corresponding dearth of professional French violinists who even had the technique to get their fingers round it. Still, slowly but surely the form did take root, and it’s those early beginnings – thanks in no small part to the 1725 establishment of the Concert Spirituel instrumental concert series at the Tuileries Palace – that are charted via this latest fizzing musicological story from Johannes Pramsohler and Ensemble Diderot.

The accompanying material is keen to draw our attention to its pair of premiere recordings of concertos by Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764) and André-Joseph Exaudet (1710-62). For me, though, the gold actually begins with the two barely recorded concertos from Jacques Aubert (1689-1753), who in 1734 became the first French composer to publish a collection of violin concertos. Taken from his second collection, Op 26, they’re works that betray his knowledge of Vivaldi’s concertos but nevertheless retain their own national flavour. The sweetly lilting central aria of No 3 in D has all ‘the elegance, the clarity, and the beautiful simplicity of the French style’ that Aubert spoke admiringly of, and it sings with immense sweetness here from Pramsohler’s leading violin. Then one of my album highlights is the E minor Concerto’s final tolling ‘Carillon’, with its succession of dynamic and textural contrasts, rhythmically circling figures and polyphonic interplay, all crisply and classily played with subtle theatre by the Diderot musicians.

On to the premiere recordings, and Exaudet’s Concerto in E flat is especially striking. Initially a violinist in Rouen, then at the Paris Opéra and Concert Spirituel, Exaudet clearly knew how to grab an audience’s attention with his instrument, and this beautifully melodic work has you sitting up straight from the soloist’s first statement, high up in sixth position and spiced with jeté bowing (where the bow is bounced on the strings). The variety and virtuosity of the outer movements and the plaintive lyricism of the central slow movement make for a work that constantly throws up fresh interest. Zero in on 2'24" during the final movement to appreciate its cadenza’s combination of textural variety and virtuoso display, and Pramsohler’s effortlessly vivacious and elegant rendering of it. Another winner from Pramsohler and his crack Ensemble Diderot team.

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