"Les Joyes des Elisées", Viola da Gamba Duo Paolo Pandolfo und Amélie Chemin

Program
"Les Joyes des Elisées" or "Heaven's Joy"
two Centuries of Viola da Gamba Duo:
from Renaissance to Style Galante
England : from Elisabeth I to Charles I, a late Renaissance

T. Hume An Almain (?-1645) The Spirit of Gambo
C. Simpson (?-1669) Division in F major for two division viols

France: between Louis XIII and Louis LV, extreme refinement

Mr de Ste.Colombe (?-1701?) Concert à 2 Violes
Forqueray (Antoine?1672-1745 or J.Baptiste?1699-1782) from "Pièces à trois violes"

Germany: from Koethen to Berlin, from Baroque to Classic

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Prelude and Fugue BW1011/BWV995
C. Schaffrath (1709-1763) Sonata a 2 Viole da Gamba

Viola da Gamba Duo
PANDOLFO CHEMIN
Paolo Pandolfo & Amélie Chemin, bass viol

About the program
The viola da gamba, as an instrument that tends towards perfection, finds its fulfillment in the encounter with a second viola: its unique variety of expressive possibilities is thus doubled and becomes almost unlimited.

Six or seven strings, stringed lute, a stringed instrument unique in its kind, on which on the one hand the human voice can be perfectly imitated and on the other hand the freedom of the plucked sound, the long resonances of bells and the old "carillons", such as those of St. Geneviève du Mont in Paris (which the great viol master M. Marais particularly loved and whose fantastic sound effects he tried to imitate on his viola da gamba).

From the early Renaissance to early Classicism, the viola da gamba accompanied the life of the noblest European courts, and so the viol duo first flourished in England, then in France and finally in Germany. The path remained the same and gradually led from southern Europe to northern Europe over the course of around three centuries.
In its small, intimate chamber music dimension, the repertoire of the viol duo is directly related to and influenced by the music of larger ensembles composed and performed at the same time.

The lyre works of Captain Tobias Hume clearly reflect the court dances and theatrical masques of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts.

The highly virtuosic divisions by C. Simpson are directly related to the Italian 'viola bastarda' repertoire, which itself reflected the exciting dialogues of the diminutions (divisions) that characterized the polyphony of the late Renaissance.

In a complex piece such as "Tombeau les Regrets" by Mr. de Sainte Colombe, the two violas are skilfully used as "multifunctional instruments", requiring the listener to imagine the images suggested by the music: mourning, weeping voices intoning their lament for the mortal fate of mankind (opening of Tombeau); the imitation of the "soundtrack" of death best known in Christian countries: the sound of bells (Cloches ou Carillon); the representation of the "calls" of the god of the underworld, Charon (Apel de Charon), who gathers the souls on his boat to take them across the river Acheron; Once again depicting the sorrowful lamentations of the bereaved (Les Pleurs); and finally changing the scene for an extraordinary leap into another dimension by placing an imaginary "hidden camera" in the middle of the Elysium fields, where the souls of the deceased actually experience a kind of "paradise": Lively and pleasant musical figures evoke dance or even popular parlor games (such as badminton); Ste.Colombe did not want to end his little musical "Divina Commedia" tale with the vision of paradise, but decided instead to draw attention back to the lamentations of those left behind on earth ("Les Pleurs"). An extraordinary piece that is famous in the world of viola da gamba lovers.

- MS135 from the Archives départementales de Lille contains three pieces for three violas by "Forqueray", and scholars are still debating whether the author is the father or the son. Interestingly, the same discussion remains open for the famous book Pièces de Viole, which was published by the son in 1745 and contains music written by the father. The extremely complex family relationship between the two (the father managed to have his son first imprisoned and then banished from France) leaves every conceivable possibility open, and we will probably never know to what extent the two fantastic musicians hated and influenced each other.
The three pieces are jewels of the best French Baroque chamber music, and we deeply regret that only three of them from "Forqueray" have survived for this instrumentation. A small note on the transcription is perhaps necessary: Since the third violin part is only a very simple bass, it was relatively easy to transform the trio into a duo by adding a few chords to the two solo violins, leaving the harmonic structure perfectly intact, as well as the stylistic vocabulary.

J.S. Bach's Solo Cello Suite No. 5 (BWV 1011) also exists in a manuscript version for lute (BWV 995). This is already a clear indication of how common it was to transcribe music for various instruments and chamber music ensembles. This prelude and fugue in particular are strongly influenced by the French overture style: the slow opening, characterized by overdotted rhythms and harmonic surprises, is clearly reminiscent of large orchestral compositions, as is the fast fugue in triple meter, in which themes and counterpoints overlap in increasingly complex and dense combinations, building up an exciting emotional intensity that once again pushes the two violas to their limits.

Christoph Schaffrath worked as a harpsichordist and composer in northern Germany several decades after J.S. Bach, first for Crown Prince Friedrich II and later for his sister Amalia. This compositional duo is an example of outstanding compositions for viola da gamba created by a non-viola da gamba player. He lets the two violas dialog with each other in a natural and beautiful way and gives them a style that approaches classical string quartet composition in an almost unique way and sometimes makes us think of the early quartets of J. Haydn. In Berlin, the viola da gamba experienced its last extraordinary heyday thanks to the Crown Prince, who apparently played it very well, and thanks to great virtuosos such as Ludwig Christian Hesse. It is interesting to say a few words about him in connection with this program, because Ludwig Christian, like the Forquerays, belonged to a family of viola da gamba virtuosos. He also learned from his father Ernst Christian, who was the protagonist of an exemplary story of how musical vocabulary and skills were traveling through Europe at the time: he had been sent to Paris to improve his skills as a gambist, where he simultaneously became a student of the two greatest masters of his time: Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray.

Paolo Pandolfo

Paolo Pandolfo and Amélie Chemin are not only musical colleagues, but also life partners.
This is the reason for the extraordinary bond between their musical work.

Paolo Pandolfo
Paolo Pandolfo is one of the world's best-known gambists.
A former pupil of Savall, he played in his ensemble between 1982 and 1990 before succeeding him as professor at the renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland.
He has performed worldwide as a soloist and has released dozens of CDs with viola da gamba repertoire. He has been invited to give master classes in Europe, the USA, Australia, Japan, Russia and South America.

Amélie Chemin
Amélie Chemin is a former student of P. Pandolfo, with whom she began playing in ensembles and duos shortly after graduating in Basel. She is also a baroque cellist and a member of several important early music ensembles (La Cetra Barockorchester, Il Gusto Barocco, Concerto Scirocco, L'Acheron, Cappella Mediterranea, Il Profondo, La Traditora).
Her concert activities have taken her all over the world. She has recorded dozens of CDs with her ensembles, including many with Paolo Pandolfo (Marais 1689, Couperin Pièces de Viole, Regina Bastarda, Abel Sonatas with Basso).


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.