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07/02/2025
“London circa 1760”
Carl Friedrich Abel: Concerto a Viola da Gamba Concertata in G major – Quartet in G major, WKO 227 – Viol pieces from the Drexel manuscript in D minor (recons. basso continuo by Benjamin Perrot)
Johann Christian Bach: Quartet in D major, opus 8, n° 2
Francesco Geminiani: Pieces for English guitar in D minor
Thomas Alexander Erskine: Trio Sonata in G major, n° 6 CM 5
Rudolf Straube: Largo in C major
Ann Ford: Instructions for Playing on the Musical Glasses in C major
La Rêveuse: Florence Bolton (viola da gamba), Benjamin Perrot (archlute, theorbo, English guitar), Serge Saitta (traverso), Stéphan Dudermel, Ajay Ranganathan (violin), Sophie Iwamura (viola), Carsten Lohff (harpsichord), Benoît Vanden Bemden (double bass), Sylvain Lemêtre (musical glasses)
Recording: Eglise protestante allemande, Paris, France (November 2023) – 58’07
harmonia mundi HMM905380 (Distributed by [Integral]) – Booklet in French and English
 
There is much to appreciate about the Galant style in eighteenth-century music. By adding some welcome rhythmic fluidity to the Baroque style and softening its occasional severity, it made possible the development of the high Classicism of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, which, at its best, arguably represents the apex of Western concert music as a union of musical and dramatic form and content. Taken as an idiom, the Galant itself can be most ingratiating, but its limitations are on full view in this collection.
It can seem as though history has passed the Galant by. As popular and respected as Johann Christian Bach was in his day, he is now unlikely to become much more than a footnote to his father, Johann Sebastian, at least as far as listeners are concerned. But at least two great composers often classified as Baroque, Rameau and Domenico Scarlatti, contributed substantially and memorably to the emergence of the Galant style, belying its reputation for superficiality. It is these composers’ exceptional sense of melody and (especially in the case of D. Scarlatti) humor that is conspicuous for its absence in the program presented here by La Rêveuse. Haydn would expand instrumental forms to a length and sophistication allowing real dramatic interest to be extracted from the ingratiating and technically simple Galant stylistic framework; without what we know as sonata form, the Galant style needs to be joined to melodic distinction to avoid becoming anodyne.
Perhaps “anodyne” is too strong a critical term for the works we have here. While not profound, they are certainly charming, even effervescent. But nothing is especially memorable. Abel, whose music takes up the bulk of the program, certainly emerges as an assured composer, but with little to distinguish it from that of J.C. Bach or of the still more obscure composers also represented here. The pieces for instrumental novelties are, I’m sorry to say, especially slight: the English guitar, a wire‑strung instrument tuned not at all like the Spanish guitar, and the musical glasses, which (I was surprised to learn) are not quite the same as the glass harmonica invented by Benjamin Franklin, apparently to resolve the former’s difficulty staying in tune. At least the pieces for musical glasses, as well as a movement for English guitar by one Rudolf Straube, have some melodic interest; I expected more from the better‑known Geminiani in his works for English guitar included here.
It was certainly pleasant to hear this music. Anyone who responds to the charm of the Galant will find things to enjoy in a listen or two, and the performances are consistently sympathetic and assured. But it’s hard not to wish these undoubtedly skilled composers displayed just a bit more personality. At least Scarlatti left us hundreds of more engaging sonatas in a similar stylistic vein!
Samuel Wigutow
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