Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet - Boismortier: Sonatas for Bass Instruments (2005)

Ensembles specializing in the French Baroque have been busy resurrecting music that's both of interest to specialists and a lot of fun for anybody discovering that much of this repertory makes good party music -- just as it did when it was composed. Boismortier was a composer from Lorraine who went to Paris and made good by pleasing well-situated patrons with attractive, somewhat kaleidoscopic music that was well suited to the needs of the instrumentalists they employed. Included on the rather confusingly titled Boismortier: Sonates pour basses are pieces for low-register instruments -- viola da gamba, cello, and bassoon, as well as several pieces of perhaps didactic nature, with unspecified and thus adaptable instrumentation. The charming Sonate III à deux parties (Sonata No. 3 in two parts) from the composer's Op. 14 is played here by varying bassoon or bassoon-viol pairs. "Charming" is a good descriptor for most of this music. It consists mostly of dance movements, a minute or two long, and the few Italian church-sonata structures (slow-fast-slow-fast), as the notes indicate, really breathe the spirit of the dance themselves. The music never goes deep, but it's full of colorful effects and rhythmic ideas that are brilliantly realized by the large and varied continuo group of Le Concert Spirituel and its director Hervé Niquet. You're constantly hearing something new and surprising in the harmonic support as a harpsichord alternates or duets with a theorbo or Baroque guitar; check out for an example the vigorous rhythms in the Menuet that opens and closes the Suite pour la viole, Op. 31, which are reminiscent of nothing so much as Rodrigo. This disc from Glossa doesn't quite succeed in immersing you in the salons and drawing rooms of the age in the way that similar releases from France's Alpha label do, and the impressionistic liner essay is a bit hard to follow for the casual reader. But plenty of people will be interested in this release. It's good news for lovers of the French Baroque, for bassoon students who want to make sure their juries will have a good time at their recitals, and for anyone planning a party and wants something different from the same old Vivaldi.