Intégrale des concertos pour violon

Description

The two volumes of Concertos that Jean-Marie Leclair wrote for his own use marked the absolute reign of the Italian instrument, which had supplanted the viola in the French repertoire. The wild virtuosity, the acrobatic bowing, the agile and firm left hand all established new technical standards that the Twelve Concertos celebrate with a fantasy, a freedom, and boldness that sail between Italy and France (when the musette imitations appear, as in the Largo of Opus 10 No. 5), a new concert of the Gouts Réunis. Leclair was not alone in this Parisian revolution; Pierre Guignon often contested his primacy, and their concert duels have remained famous, but Leclair's genius always prevailed, in these Concertos as well as at the Opera, where Scylla and Glaucus marked the second peak of the Tragédie lyrique. The Concertos had modest success on record; Jean François Paillard was the first to distribute them to Huguette Fernandez and Germaine Raymond, returning to them for stereophonic recordings with Gérard Jarry. In the modern era, Jaap Schröder, as a pioneer, gave striking prominence to three Concertos with his Amsterdam ensemble, before Simon Standage imposed a somewhat too classical model on the complete works, with Fabio Biondi responding with a selection in equivalent terms. The landscape changed radically with a divine recording by Monica Huggett and the Opus 7 spiritedly performed by Luis Otavio Santos and the Muffatti. As a coda to these brilliant and historically informed reinterpretations, the complete works by Leyla Schayegh on Glossa are virtuosic and impertinent. What Igor Ruhadze and his Violoni Capricciosi offer here is by no means wise or academic, as I have read here and there; it often bursts forth in a performance that takes all the risks, showing great character in the jig finales or the musettes. Moreover, while she delivers a brilliant Opus 7, which the collection calls for, I believe her Opus 10, less favored by violinists—more complex, more French with its numerous references to dances—always finds the right tone, a bit nostalgic, with elegances that anticipate the classicism of Mozart, so that the complete works add to a rather sparse discography, offering within it a unique angle from which these admirable concertos can be seen and heard in a different way. (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)