Douce Dame Jolie Œuvres pour quatuor de flûte à bec

Description

The recorder quartets thrived in the wake of the movement to rediscover ancient music in the last quarter of the 20th century. The Loeki Stardust Quartet played a driving role in outlining the four paths that still determine the "scope" of this type of ensemble: a/ interpretation of the historically attested body of works — Renaissance and "Baroque" — b/ transcriptions, rewritings of works from these periods or others c/ improvisation, d/ interpretation of a new body of works inspired by the anchoring in the sound landscape of these ensembles and the new life given to the family of instruments, whose construction and design were, by extension, sometimes revolutionized. In the CD of this female quartet, there are two transcriptions-rewritings of medieval pieces, the transcription of two excerpts from organ works by Bach (a favored corpus, as the consort of recorders effectively constitutes a kind of "mouth organ"), and the creation of five works by contemporary composers. Great qualities of interpretation: sound perfection, coherence and balance, roundness, ease... Unfortunately, the contemporary works — which make up the bulk of this recording — present, for many of them, a conventional writing style (Sören Sieg accumulates meticulously crafted melodic and rhythmic structures, leading to tiresome parallelism, S. Marshall is completely retrogressive. Theodolou, sometimes very syrupy, seems to be doing cut-and-paste of tunes for barrel organ, or using a cheap orientalism.) It's at best pleasant. No piece imposes itself on the listener as a true invention. What a shame. (Bertrand Abraham)