Recent months have seen the release of a number of imaginatively conceived and executed recordings of French viola da gamba music, employing rich continuo forces and even percussion instruments to create fascinating ensemble colours and effects. None approaches the standards set by this recording. Paolo Pandolfo stands alone in his generation as the master of his instrument and of a repertory that depends upon a deep affinity for its socio-historical context. His harpsichordist, Mitzi Meyerson accompanies with exceptional sensitivity and grace.
Labyrinths form the theme of the CD: Louis XIV's passion for them, the monumental Labyrinthe Marais composed to amuse him, and the labyrinthine character of Marais' output when taken as a whole. Pierre Jacquier has contributed a thought-provoking essay and Pandolfo (rather courageously) offers notional monologues related to the pieces he selected to represent a hypothetical route through Marais' musical maze.
The CD begins, appropriately, with a freely expressed prelude (almost non-mesure) that sets the tone for the recording and ends with a playfully unstuffy performance of a chaconne. Along the way there are spine-tingling allusions to a harp, bells, a musette and a guitar; a yearning polonaise, a lascivious sarabande and a pompous Persian march (surely inspired by the 1715 visit of the Persian ambassador). A breathless game of badminton (Le jeu du volant), a surgical procedure (vividly narrated in period voice by Francois Fauche) and a hallucinogenic whirlwind, a delicate lament and a eulogy provide momentary diversion. But in Pandolfo's hands none eclipse the dramatically conceived and passionately realized Labyrinthe itself.
The CD - its theme and the performances of the individual pieces - is utterly captivating. It isn't simply that Pandolfo is completely at ease with the instrument and the idiom; he creates new sounds and new combinations of effects with his continuo forces (in Cloches ou carillon and La musette) - sounds and effects not precisely notated in the music and probably unimagined by Marais, but within the scope and idiom of the instruments. Pandolfo himself can play so softly, almost without attack, so clearly, so quickly and yet so apparently effortlessly. He can play a chord a dozen different ways, and he appears to relish the 'growl-ish' effects the lower strings of the bass viol can produce, making them sound truly beautiful and even exotic. The second viol, the harpsichord, theorbo, two baroque guitars and array of percussion instruments (in the Marche persane and the Chaconne en rondeau) provide Pandolfo with an astonishingly fresh palate of instrumental colour in which to swathe his interpretations. So expertly has the ensemble been recorded that for once the CD listener can truly imagine himself among the privileged few invited to the king's private rooms at Versailles. This is a thrilling disc and I am lost in admiration.'