Customer Reviews

Purcell · Dieupart - Suites for recorder / La Simphonie du Marais · Hugo Reyne

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3 star:		(2)
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This is very good recording of very interesting music, not easy music anyway, at least if we talk about Dieupart, the Frenchman living in London. His style is pure orthodox French, always following the suite schema, including very amazing overtures, beautiful allemandes and some polyphonical giges. This suites are so well conceived that gain recognizance from Bach at the time. Is the kind of music to listen again and again and enjoy more and more as one gets into the stile. The playing of Hugo Reyne is expressive, absolutely in style, helped by warm tone and (well, I have to point it out) absolutely in tune. In the passpied of suite N2 he gives us an example of perfect French articulation, according with Hotetterre principles. To tell the truth I didn't enjoy the use of violin in Suite 3, which IMHO calls for a more introspective approach without artificial "ritornellos". Remarkable is the research work, leading them to the design and construction of a b' flat fourth used for the first time here (I remember the W.V. Hawe version with a b'' flat soprano fourth flute, sure best suited for a live concert not a cd, and of course all the "arrangements" for standard soprano).
The Purcell cd is the only "modern" recording (after 1980) in authentic old recorders. In fact it is so rare for a recorder player to have the opportunity to play at least once in his/her life an old instrument, and here we have a whole baroque consort (the legendary chester Bressan, the equivalent of Stradivarius) playing together, allowing us to appreciate the magnificent way their "voices" blend. The English recorder music is a whole universe partially unknown, and extremely rich, going from renaissance to high baroque. From the provincial taste, brought back to the city with the restoration, to the eclectic 1700 London musical scene, featuring many of the best musicians around the world working together.
The players in this cd are among the best and most renowned in the world, from the new and very interesting French school of recorder playing, focusing in color and expressivities. Is interesting to note here how close their style relate to Franz Bruggen. By the way there was a controversy about him been out of tune 30 years ago... Some day may be we can start a controversy about the piano been out of tune, or how awfully out of tune is a tempered major third, or about how can you be in tune and make vibrato all the time (is the way I feel after only 5 yrs of not listening romantic music)... not now, not here.
Enjoy the cd is really worth buying.

this recording the purcell's wunderfull music sounds nice, but not more. h. reyne is a fine player but his intonation is not perfect even his sound is good but everytime on the same level. other recorder players like steger or marq are much better.

Simply put, this is a highly mediocre recording. The music itself is perfectly nice - several of the Purcell works are quite memorable, and overall these are a fine representative sample of his chamber music, as well as that of the lesser known Dieupart. But this is weak recorder playing. They are frequently extremely out of tune - and I'm perfectly aware that baroque intonation can be quite different from modern intonation and that the recorder has even greater leeway with regard to this than many other instruments, but this is just plain out of tune - and their tone is husky and not always pleasant. The miking is too close as well. Skip this one.