MONSIEUR DE SAINTE COLOMBE Pièces de viole
Paolo Pandolfo
GCD 920408
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Performing artists
Paolo Pandolfo, viola da gamba Thomas Boysen, theorbo and baroque guitar
Production details
Playing time: 68'44Recorded in Namur (Belgium) in January 2005Engineered and produced by Manuel MohinoExecutive producer: Carlos CésterBooklet essays by Pierre Jaquier & Paolo PandolfoDesign 00:03:00 oficina tresminutos Booklet essay: in English - Français - Deutsch - Español
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MONSIEUR DE SAINTE COLOMBE
Pièces de viole
01-07 PIÈCES EN RÉ MINEUR Prélude Allemande Courante & double Sarabande & double Gigue Gavotte Chaconne 08-16 PIÈCES EN SOL Prélude Allemande Courante Sarabande Gigue Menuet PianelleSarabande Gigue 17-22 PIÈCES EN RÉ Petite pièce Sarabande Courente & double Sarabande Menuet Vielle23- 28 PIÈCES EN DO MAJEUROuverture Menuet Sarabande en passacaille Chansonette Gigue Chaconne
About this CD
No engraved portrait, no naturalization act, no fees as member of the King's Chamber, no inventory after his death; no story picked up by the attentive pen of a Tallemant des Réaux, no juicy anecdotes, no personal writings: Monsieur de Sainte Colombe is a musician without a biography... But not one without music, nor without a reputation often reflected in the period's texts. A master in both senses of the word: because of his knowledge of the instrument and because of his art in teaching it. The manuscripts we have used for this recording are the so-called Panmure and Tournus, perhaps the work of pupils (like the Scottish brothers Maule) who brought back home at least part of the master's corpus of compositions. Therein lies a large proportion (some 180 pieces altogether) of an extremely idiomatic music for the instrument, always highly personal and full of unforeseeable twists and turns, verging on extravagance, which in that respects brings to mind the music (perhaps better known to current audiences of early music) of his Concerts à deux violes égales. A general atmosphere emerges from the manuscripts which fully contradicts the image (analogous to the silver-screen persona of St. Colombe in Tous les matins du monde) of an artist given to obscurity, tormented by pain, complacently abandoning himself to solitude and suffering. Sainte Colombe's are not autograph manuscripts; the pieces are grouped haphazardly, jotted down in performance, copied here and there, more or less classified by genre, but the ensemble is awkward to use in that order and hardly revealing of the treasures it contains. It is the performer's vigour that helps us read the music, as Paolo Pandolfo does here, elaborating on the themes and setting them within the matt gilded frame of a basso continuo...
It seemed that the music of Carl Friedrich Abel was proving singularly impervious to modern performance initiatives. More is known about the life and times of this Köthen-born composer than about his actual music (he can be placed as a pupil of JS Bach and as someone who died in the year of the 17 year-old Beethoven’s first visit to Vienna). Yet it was as a virtuosic improviser on the by then (surely?) outdated instrument of the viola da gamba that Abel was equally known for by his contemporaries. So, the most suitable candidate in the 21st century for bringing back Abel’s music to its rightful place needs to be not only a supreme interpreter on the viola da gamba and steeped in its repertory but one capable of understanding the almost lost art of improvisation. [read more...]
Widely admired as a virtuoso exponent of the viola da gamba through his concert performances and recordings of key composers from Germany, France, Spain, England and his native Italy, Paolo Pandolfo has in recent years been concentrating on his instincts and skills for improvising and composing (not to mention continuing with his teaching). An artist who can bring out the expressive vitality and poetry in the viol music of composers such as Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais or J.S. Bach is plainly also relishing the challenges of other musical explorations that have included, on disc, an unaccompanied tour de force in A Solo and a travelogue (from this artist who is a modern, high-tech nomad himself) in Travel Notes. [read more...]