Musical programs sampling works of a specific time and place are difficult to execute effectively. Choices may often seem merely random, but the chamber ensemble La Rêveuse does well here in an especially difficult situation. The city of London around 1720 was in the midst of tremendous stylistic and sociocultural change musically, and La Rêveuse gives a feel for a large group of the currents in the musical waters at the time, focusing on the new genre of chamber music and its middle-class-home location. The album is ...
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Musical programs sampling works of a specific time and place are difficult to execute effectively. Choices may often seem merely random, but the chamber ensemble La Rêveuse does well here in an especially difficult situation. The city of London around 1720 was in the midst of tremendous stylistic and sociocultural change musically, and La Rêveuse gives a feel for a large group of the currents in the musical waters at the time, focusing on the new genre of chamber music and its middle-class-home location. The album is subtitled "Corelli's Legacy," and indeed, there are examples of just that, with a trio sonata arrangement by composer Johann Christian Schickhardt of a Corelli concerto grosso, a rare flute concerto by Schickhardt himself, and a trio sonata by Corelli's follower Francesco Geminiani. However, there are other slices of the moment as well. La Rêveuse and director Benjamin Perrot include the instrumental turning points: recorder to flute, and viola da gamba to cello, and they include an...
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