Texte paru dans: / Appeared in:
*  
GRAMOPHONE (07/2025)
Pour s'abonner / Subscription information






Alpha  Alpha 1140

Code barres / Barcode :01624511404

Reviewer : Mark Seow

On the most superficial of listenings, this is a bog-standard collection of good Baroque music played well. We are in very capable hands: Sophie Gent, who frequently leads ensembles including Pygmalion, Ricercar Consort, Il Gardellino and Arcangelo, is a leading period violinist of her generation. Here, with Ensemble Masques under Olivier Fortin, she is a stunning, sparkling soloist. Her performance of JS Bach’s Concerto in A minor, BWV1041, is the recording’s most successful offering. It opens the album with utter assuredness: the tempo is keenly felt, articulation clean and phrasing delivered pleasingly throughout. How, in the Allegro assai, the concerto’s final movement, Gent fades out of the first solo episode is a thing of wonder. The bariolage patterns, deftly voiced to bring out the bass line, are a magisterial mixture of dynamic and agogic emphasis.

Gent’s strength as soloist is that, at heart, she is an astoundingly good chamber musician. Especially when in unison and dialogue with the first violins led by Louis Créac’h, there is glorious give and take. Whether they are locked in aching suspensions or in sprightly imitation, Gent and Créac’h persuasively move in telepathy (so much so that my library is practically screaming out for a Bach ‘Double’ from this duo).

As elegant as these performances are from Ensembles Masques, they are not electrifying. There is something almost neutral about them; it’s as if one is listening to music wiped clean of the accrual of traditions. Of course, this is not really the case and, as ever, copious interpretation and rhetorical traditions are at play. Yet in many ways, this is precisely the kind of Bach performance that I so often desire. To hear this recording’s wonders, one might have to listen with slightly more open and searching ears than one might like.

The famous Viola Concerto by Telemann is the least convincing performance. Viola player Kathleen Kajioka certainly conjures a welcoming warmth but her ornamentation is occasionally unintelligible and her articulation can feel arbitrary. The pulls in tempo, especially in the second movement, are largely unnecessary to articulate the shifts in mood, colour or harmony. I prefer Alfonso Leal del Ojo’s effortlessly fruity version with The English Concert (Signum, 12/18) or Antoine Tamestit’s vociferous fleet-of-foot virtuosity alongside the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Harmonia Mundi, 2/22).

Cliquez l'un ou l'autre bouton pour découvrir bien d'autres critiques de CD
 Click either button for many other reviews