La Nébuleuse, Gabriel Rignol
82:04
musicaFicta MF8040
Recordings of relatively little-known Charpentier are always welcome – and, despite the explosion of interest in his music of the last 40 years, there is still plenty to go at. So thanks to La Nébuleuese for devoting their debut recording to this marvellous repertoire. Texts/translations are online. The forces are four singers (the ‘haute-contre’ sounds more like a falsettist to me and is not always clearly audible in ensembles) with 2 violins, gamba, keyboard and theorbo. Tempi are sensible, and the programme reflects the variety of Charpentier’s scorings.
Nearly.
The acceptance of ‘one voice per part’ has brought with it a tendency to blind us to the fact that more singers than this are sometimes part of the composer’s conception. It is thus rather ironic that the essay draws our attention to details of soli/tutti vocal scoring that we do not actually hear. And there are other aspects of performance practice with which I am not entirely comfortable, such as over-scored continuo sections and composed additional quasi-obbligato lines for melodic instruments.
So, for me, this is a case of well done, but do give full attention to all details next time. And I do hope there will be a next time.
David Hansell