What a treat to have a first solo album from Philippe Pierlot, the Belgian viola da gamba player best known for being the director of the Ricercar Ensemble, and what a double treat for it then to sound so absolutely ravishing.
In programming terms alone, “Meditation” is a joy for its combination of variety and musicological storytelling. A charting of the viola da gamba’s time in the sun via the music of its finest exponents, it opens with a selection of airs from Tobias Hume’s (1579-1645) The First Part of Ayres of 1605, which was the first complete collection of pieces for solo viola da gamba to be published on British shores. From there it’s a hop over the Channel to celebrate the instrument’s heyday in France. First for a handful of sarabandes and courantes, plus a chaconne, from Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (1640-1700). Then Les Voix humaines by Marin Marais (1656-1728), before returning to British shores for a few pieces by Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787), whose love for the fast-becoming-unfashionable viol saw him adapt his own pre-Classical style to something closer to that of his family friend and onetime teacher Johann Sebastian Bach. Pierlot then winds things up with his own transcriptions of two German works – the Prélude, Sarabande and Menuet from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, and a Meditation for harpsichord piece that Johann Jakob Froberger wrote on a trip to Paris in 1660.
Recorded in Santa Maria di Micciano, the performances themselves have been captured with vibrant-toned intimacy, and a nice amount of church acoustic in the mix; and while there’s audible breathing, I’m inclined to think that it’s worth it for the pleasure of being really able to appreciate the timbres of hair catching – and of subtle mid-bow modulations in weight and attack – on gut string. Pierlot’s Thomas Allred 1635 viola da gamba meanwhile fully lives up to the viola da gamba’s ‘ambassador’ nickname with its mahogany’s sweetness, and Pierlot’s actual playing is as beguiling in the rhythmic rise and fall of an up-tempo Sarabande as in his programme’s many slower-spun lyrical moments. As for the album title, this refers to the programme’s first and last pieces, which serve as an ear-pricking way to finish by coming full circle, while having moved to an altogether different and more exotic place in stylistic and harmonic terms. Don’t leave too soon either, because as the Froberger’s final chord dies away there’s an inspired postscript in the form of far-off church bell chimes. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz