Juilliard415 Performs Couperin, Marais, Leclair and Rebel

To the delight of those who enjoy Baroque music, the Juilliard415, the school's period instrument ensemble, gave a full length recital (75 minutes with no intermission) yesterday afternoon at Holy Trinity Church on Central Park West.  The program of French music from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries featured the works of several of that era's most notable composers - Couperin, Marais, Leclair and Rebel.

The program began with a fascinating programmatic piece, François Couperin's La Apothéose de Corelli (1724).  In his youth Couperin, along with most other French composers, had been deeply influenced by the sonatas of Arcangelo Corelli.  The present work is not so much a tribute to the Italian composer, though, as an attempt - together with its companion piece La Apothéose de Lully - to reconcile the French and Italian styles of music.  As one source puts it:

"Couperin was in fact far too individual a composer to slavishly adhere to any style, and his great achievement was to seek a reconciliation that, in the words appended to the final movement of his Lully Apotheosis, would 'achieve a new perfection in music.' This philosophy was above all articulated in that work, which appeared in 1725, and the Apotheosis of Corelli, published the previous year. In taking the two greatest protagonists of the opposing styles for his subject matter, Couperin was clearly laying out the philosophy which had guided his artistic career."

The most interesting by far of the seven movements was the fifth, a gently played lullaby.

The next work was Marin Marais's Suite No. 2 in G minor (1692) that was originally published in Pièces en trio pour les flûtes, violons et dessus de viole.  The work was an anomaly in Marais's oeuvre, first in that it was in trio form, and secondly in that it specifically included flutes in the instrumentation.  The winds were, in fact, given a great deal of prominence in the composition and were exceptionally well played at this performance by Melanie Williams on flute and Caroline Ross on oboe.

Following the Marais came Jean-Marie Leclair's Ouverture in A major, Op. 13, No. 3, taken from Ouvertures et Trios (1753).  Leclair was not only a well known composer in his day but a virtuoso violinist as well.  Sadly, he came to a bad end when he was found stabbed to death in his home in 1764.  The present overture showed the influence that both the French and Italian styles had in the development of his music.

The musicians then returned to Couperin and performed two selections, a Sonade and an Allemande, from La Françoise.  As mentioned above, Couperin had been in his youth greatly influenced by Corelli and an anecdote retold by oboist David Dickey in the Program Notes regarding an early performance of the sonata illustrated very well the extent of his infatuation.

"Couperin was keen to have this sonata performed in the same concert series where he had heard Corelli's music.  To do this, he rearranged the letters of his name to sound Italian, knowing the keen appetite of the French for foreign novelties above all else.  Perhaps he did not want to pen his own name on music so strongly influenced by the Italian style for an audience full of French music lovers.  Couperin says the audience devoured his music with eagerness and that his Italian name brought him considerable applause."

The program ended with Jean-Féry Rebel's Les Caractères de la Danse (1715).  Rebel was intimately associated with the Paris Opera - first as violinist, then as harpsichordist and finally as conductor - and with its ballet company as well.  It was through this association that he first met one of the company's prima ballerinas Françoise Prévost for whom he wrote a number of dance pieces beginning with Caprice in 1711.  These were among the first of a new art form, the ballet pantomine (also referred to as the ballet d'action), that attempted to tell a story solely through movement and gesture without the use of words.  Although Les Caractères became a huge success for Prévost, it was even more so for her students Marie Sallé and Marie-Anne Cupis de Camargo.  Sallé, who had performed the work in 1727 in London with Handel conducting, created a scandal in 1729 in Paris when she danced her part in street clothes and without the use of a mask.  So impressed was he with Sallé's dancing that Voltaire was inspired to write:

"Ah! Camargo how brilliant you are! But Sallé, great gods, is ravishing! How light your steps; but how sweet are hers! You are fresh; she is inimitable Nymphs jump like you, But the Graces dance like her!"

The Juilliard415 is an extraordinarily talented ensemble; and the noontime recitals they give at Holy Trinity, while informal, represent New Yorkers' best opportunity to hear Baroque chamber music played on authentic period instruments.  I'm looking forward to attending more performances in this series.