Described by the producer as a "disc of sensuous Baroque tunes," La Petit Mort from Lumiere features popular Baroque works in stripped-down arrangements for solo violin and solo cello. Performed on modern instruments and in a modern style by violinist
Victoria Paterson and cellist
Robert Burkhart, the 29 Baroque tunes here range from Pachelbel's Canon through
Vivaldi's Four Seasons to
Bach's Air on the G string, as well as other less familiar material.
Paterson and
Burkhart are both fine players with more than enough technique to play these arrangements and plenty of tonal sweetness to make them appealing. Though listeners familiar with the pieces may miss the harmony and counterpoint these arrangements necessarily leave out -- Pachelbel's Canon played by only two instruments is really a canon anymore -- listeners familiar with these works only through their use in popular culture contexts are unlikely to miss what they never had.
By way of explanation, the disc takes its French title from a long-lost work by Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre entitled La Petit Mort (The Little Death) included in the program. According to the anonymous liner notes, "The legend goes that before (the composer's) husband passed away in 1704, she wrote this work as a gift for her secret lover who longed for her while her husband was still alive, but dared not reveal himself. This piece was a secret message to her lover that if he waited, he would experience La Petit Mort." Listeners are left to judge for themselves if the piece lives up to its title. Produced and edited by
Robert Paterson, the violinist's husband, the sound here is clean and warm, though curiously lacking in a sense of time and place.