At the Ambronay Festival, the quicksilver game of the violist Lucile Boulanger

by time news

The second weekend of the 43e Ambronay Festival opened on Friday September 23 with a recital by gambist Lucile Boulanger. At 36, the French musician is now one of the key figures of this instrument, which was brought up to date some thirty years ago by Jordi Savall and Alain Corneau’s film. All the mornings of the world (1991). Dressed all in black, the young woman, her long loose hair held back to the side, has a natural grace and elegance that permeate her quicksilver and loose playing, in perpetual search for sounds, dynamics, expression.

The theme of the festival this year highlights the interaction between present and past. The program therefore skilfully mixes baroque repertoire and contemporary music (including an in-house creation). The prestigious history of the viola da gamba in France began with the composer Nicolas Hotman (circa 1610-1663), culminating with Marin Marais (1656-1728), before gradually falling into disuse under Louis XV. The Suite in D minor performs five pieces, from the “Prélude du sieur Dubuisson” to the “Gigue” with variations, including “Ballet”, “Courante” and “Sarabande”. Lucile Boulanger deploys there a fine and sensual bow, experienced in ornamental rhetoric, according to elegy in double strings or Sicilian jumping to the dotted rhythm.

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It is to the composer Philippe Hersant (born in 1948) that returns the first contemporary incursion with The shadow of a doubtseries of miniatures built around the figure of The Orpheus, by Monteverdi. If we easily recognize the famous introductory motif of the 1607 opera in “Fanfare” as well as in the slow psalmody of “La Messagère”, the play in col legno, which uses the wood of the bow on the strings, live “Les Ombres”, followed by a dark and tragic “Harpe d’Orphée”, far from the usual seductions of the enchanting poet of the Underworld, while “Les Esprits” wander between serious and disembodied harmonics.

A character of improvisation

The Sieur de Sainte-Colombe (circa 1640-circa 1700) occupies a special place in the line of violists (he is the central figure, impregnable and solitary, in Alain Corneau’s film). The instrument owes him in particular the addition of a low seventh string (on the note A), which pulls it towards the register of the depths. A character of improvisation pervades the six dances of the Suite in D minor : from the meditation of the “Prelude” to the low hum of the “Chaconne »passing through the wandering harmony of the “Germane”, the dotted rhythm of the “Courante”, the violent melancholy of the “Sarabande”, which is followed by a joyful and dancing “Gavotte”.

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