Torchsongs Transformed
Les Délices
(No timing available)
Navona Records nv6195
If you’ve ever wondered what choice French Baroque airs would sound like interwoven with jazz and pop standards played by the same ensemble (oboe, gamba and harpsichord) here’s your chance to find out. It’s a bit surreal but, with this quality of playing, works weirdly well though I’d have gone for Yesterday rather than Michelle to follow Rameau’s Tristes apprêtsand I can’t believe I’ve just written that in a review for EMR! This is definitely a disc for the mellower stages of the evening to which it is hard to apply our usual criteria so I haven’t given any stars, but I will say that I smiled a lot while listening and that the gamba could have a future as a jazz instrument! I’m just off to Ronnie Scott’s for a bit of Couperin.
David Hansell
