Lettres en musique
Anne Marie Dragosits
74:00
L’Encelade ECL2402
From its first explosive entry on this CD in music by Claude Balbastre, the clavecin by Christian Kroll of 1770 from the Collection François Badout, Fondation du Sautereau, Neuchâtel establishes itself as an instrument demanding our attention. At full volume, it has a huge voice, but is also capable of much more subtle and gentle utterances. Anne Marie Dragosits certainly puts it through its paces and timbres in music by a selection of largely unfamiliar French composers of the 18th century. The inspirations of the CD are the characters in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 troubling novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to whose letters Dragosits attaches the music. Although this idea is an intriguing one, a linking device of this sort is not really needed from my perspective as a framework for music that more than stands on its own two feet. However, fans of the novel or the ensuing films will undoubtedly enjoy the music as a soundtrack to the various ongoing intrigues of the plot. What is striking musically is the unerringly high standard of the music, regardless of the obscurity of its composer, and Anne Marie Dragosits and her Kroll clavecin are its ideal advocates.
D. James Ross