Old music, new titillations

Abstract

Bringing an early music recording to fruition today is as difficult as it ever has been. The financial obstacles are significant of course. But finding repertory that would clearly benefit from a new release is also not as easy as it once was. What can today’s artists offer, in a discography that becomes denser by the month? Some possible answers are supplied in the discs under review here. In some cases, a spark of programming genius has set off an hour of musical fireworks. In others, it is inspired ornamentation and improvisation that enlivens even the sturdiest stalwarts of the canon. The latter is certainly true of Le Poème Harmonique’s recording, Anamorfosi (Alpha 438, issued 2019). Vincent Dumestre’s elaborate conceit for the project is that his chosen 17th-century repertory, when combined with appropriate ornamentation, improvisation or contrafact text, achieves an effect similar to anamorphosis, where a distorted visual subject can only be fully understood from the correct perspective. Whether or not this metaphor resonates with the listener, the music-making on this disc is of a high quality, and the sound has been beautifully captured. There is a great deal of value both in the unusual works recorded here, and in the well-known pieces presented in unfamiliar interpretations.