Composer: John Adams, Jehan Alain, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, Knut Nystedt
Performer: Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, La Tempête
Conductor: Simon-Pierre Bestion
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Alpha
Catalogue: ALPHA985
Release: 2023
Size: 1.37 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Bach: Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor, BWV1052
01. Allegro
Gorecki: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, Op. 40
02. I. Allegro molto
03. Nystedt: Immortal Bach, Op. 153
Adams: Shaker Loops
04. I. Shaking and Trembling
05. Alain: Litanies, AWV100
Adams: Shaker Loops
06. II. Hymning Slews
07. Bach: Passacaglia in C minor, BWV582
08. Nystedt: Immortal Bach, Op. 153
Bach: Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052
09. III. Allegro
Gorecki: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, Op. 40
10. II. Vivace marcatissimo
Adams: Shaker Loops
11. III. Loops and Verses
12. IV. A Final Shaking
13. Bach: Chorale Prelude BWV668 ‘Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich’
J. S. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in D minor is the centrepiece of this programme: ‘This music seems absolutely modern to me: a continuous, endlessly developing thread, giving it an almost hypnotic aspect… These adjectives also belong to the vocabulary of today’s music, whether it is “popular”, as in techno, or “art music”, as in the so-called repetitive or minimalist movement’, says Simon-Pierre Bestion. Two hundred and thirty years after Bach, Gorecki wrote a harpsichord concerto in the same key, using it ‘as a very rhythmic and extremely stealthy instrument’. John Adams, a leading figure of the American minimalist movement, composed Shaker Loops in 1978: ‘This masterpiece takes on a special interest because we play on instruments with gut strings. That gives the music a very special texture.’ Bach’s Passacaglia (‘a single musical theme heard forty-one times’) and Jehan Alain’s Litanies complete this programme, which brings together the Bestion brothers, with Louis-Noel Bestion de Camboulas as soloist in the concertos.
The analogy of Baroque music, especially Bach with his intense focus on repeated motivic work, with the minimalists has been made before, and it is not entirely convincing. The resemblance is vivid enough on the surface but is ultimately superficial, for Bach was — to borrow a word from Milton Babbitt — a maximalist. What the concept needs is to be bulked up, so to speak, with works that are related both to Bach and the minimalists, and that is what the early music group La Tempète and conductor Simon-Pierre Bestion offer here, with Bach and John Adams’ Shaker Loops at the poles. Shaker Loops, the Bach Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, and the Harpsichord Concerto, Op. 40, of Henryk Górecki, are broken up into individual movements (Bach’s concerto is missing its slow movement, too). This is questionable, for Bestion’s idea is strong enough to hold up without distorting the source material like this, but it does allow for startling juxtapositions like that of Bach’s finale with the second movement of the Górecki. Elsewhere, there are neo-Bachian works by composer Knut Nystedt and the Litanies of Jehan Alain, arranged for harpsichord and orchestra. At times, the program seems close to going off the rails, but one is also left with the feeling that Bestion is on to something original. Stimulating, at the very least.