Review: Concerts in the West - Reveries Musicales (From This is The West Country)

Review: Concerts in the West - Reveries Musicales

8:30am Wednesday 11th July 2012 in Somerset

Concerts in the West, performance by Rêveries Musicales, Friday, June 8, Ilminster Arts Centre.

Review by Anthony Pither.

Composers have always borrowed from each other and even from themselves. For Bach and Handel, repackaging was a practical way of life. In this performance by Rêveries Musicales, we heard distinctive works by each of them: Bach’s humorous capriccio on the departure of his beloved brother, and one of Handel’s greatest chamber works, his Oboe Sonata in G minor.

In the ingeniously titled Musical Magpies and Compositional Cuckoos, three brilliant Royal Academy of Music post-graduates performed eight pieces by eight different Baroque composers who had borrowed, or combined prevalent influences from several countries.

The programme began with an oboe sonata by Nicholas Chédeville who had paid a publisher to pass the work off as a creation of the famous Vivaldi! Characteristic of the whole evening was the passionate playing of the members of Rêveries Musicales - Leo Duarte (baroque oboe), Jonathan Rees (baroque cello) and Tom Foster (harpsichord) who each provided witty introductions.

Tom prefaced his realisation of Froberger’s Tombeau, a dedication to the composer’s friend Blancrocher, with an amusing insight: was the descending scale, with which the short piece concluded, a reference to Monsieur Blancrocher falling down stairs or descending into hell?

A selection from Marin Marais’ Suite d’un goût exotique was the perfect vehicle with which to show off Jonathan’s virtuosic playing of the viol da gamba. In the final work, the gamba took on a continuo role with the harpsichord, while Leo raced through the fast movements and heightened the pathos in the slow ones in Couperin’s first suite from Les goûts réunis, a bringing together of all the most tasteful flavours of the time.