Performer: Garth Knox, Agnès Vesterman, Sylvain Lemêtre
Audio CD
Number of Discs: 1
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: ECM
Size: 570 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Cunningham: Black Brittany
02. Purcell: Music for a While
03. Vivaldi: Concerto for viola d’amore in d-minor RV 393: I. Allegro
04. Vivaldi: Concerto for viola d’amore in d-minor RV 394: II. Largo
05. Vivaldi: Concerto for viola d’amore in d-minor RV 395: III. Presto
06. Knox: Fuga libre
07. Von Bingen, de Machaut: Ave, generosa – Tels rit au ma(t)in qui au soir pleure
08. Saariaho: Vent nocturne: I. Sombres miroirs (Dark Mirrors)
09. Dowland: Flow my Tears
10. Saariaho: Vent nocturne: II. Soupirs de l’obscur (Breaths of the Obscure)
11. Traditional: Three Dances: Saltarello I – Ghaetta – Saltarello II
12. Traditional: Pipe, Harp and Fiddle
Many instrumental compositions in music history, even if they’re called sonata, suite, sinfonia or even fantasia, are essentially dances or else exhibit an unmistakable dancelike character. Not a few examples of so-called art music also have their origins in the folk music of a particular country or make use of popular or folk elements. Under the title “Saltarello”, a 14th-century fast Italian dance in ¾ time that survives today as a folk dance, viola player Garth Knox couples works stretching from the 12th century to the present day and demonstrates how fragile, even arbitrary, is the line drawn between art and folk music, but also that between old music and new sounds. Taking up fiddle, viola and viola d’amore, accompanied by cellist Agnès Vesterman and percussionist Sylvain Lemêtre, Knox presents his own works alongside music by Hildegard von Bingen; he juxtaposes the exquisite Renaissance sounds of John Dowland against pieces by Kaija Saariaho that make subtle use of electronics, and sets arrangements of traditional melodies and anonymous dance movements against Vivaldi’s D minor Viola d’amore Concerto – a sensuous survey of 1000 years of musical events.