‘Hidden Gems’ of French Baroque Music, Ensemble Molière, Wigmore Hall, 26/4/26

François Collin de Blamont, Diane et Endymion, overture; Sébastien de Brossard, Sonate en Trio in E minor SdB. 220; Michel Corrette Sonata in B flat Op. 20 No. 4 ‘Les délices de la solitude; Louis-Gabriel Guillemain, Sonata in A minor Op. 17 No. 6; François Couperin, La sultane; Jean-François Dandrieu, Sonata in G minor Op. 1 No. 3; Michel-Richard de Lalandel, Simphonies pour le Souper du Roy

I got into a huge planning muddle over this day. I had originally planned to get an early Eurostar to Amsterdam, see an opera, Weinberg’s The Passenger, in the evening, have a quick look at a bit of Amsterdam on Sunday afternoon/Monday morning and go back to the UK about midday the next day. THEN I discovered there was a Monday morning meeting of great importance I had to be at in the UK near where I live. THEN I also discovered that The Passenger performance was actually a matinee and there would only be 40 mins between my train’s projected arrival in Amsterdam and the performance starting! For a while I thought of going to Amsterdam and coming back to the UK the same day (ie 26 April) and changed rail and hotel bookings on that basis. In the end, though, I thought it was all too risky (I also had an email warning of long queues on Eurostar) and too wearing, and managed to shift my Eurostar booking to something else I was doing in July, and the Dutch Opera kindly gave me my money back. I still had two day’s worth of London hotel bookings, though, so decided to spend the day in London on Sunday. There wasn’t much on musically, but I did manage to find two concerts of chamber music.

This was the first of them – a programme of pretty obscure Baroque music from 18^TH century France (Couperin being the only composer I had heard of). The concert was the debut of this ensemble at the Wigmore hall. The group, on this showing, consists of a harpsichord,  period flute, period bassoon violin and viola da gamba, all very well played and the group was well balanced ,as an ensemble. As for ‘Hidden Gems’  -well, hidden certainly but whether gems is another matter. If Vivaldi has written 50 operas and only say 10 have been performed in modern times, then it is worth assuming that there’s plenty to be explored in the remaining 40 by a proven inventive and eminently-worth- listening-to composer. But if completely unknown composers from the Baroque period have written 1000’s of unknown pieces how many of them are likely to be ‘gems’?  I am afraid that to my mind few of these pieces were in that category.  The one I liked best – it seemed to have a lot of character with a special role for the bassoon – was the Michel Corrette Sonata in B flat. The LeLande piece ‘for the king’s supper’ was also interesting.            

But too many of the pieces were easy on the ear but rather unmemorable. Of course I get that an ensemble making its debut doesn’t want to perform yet another version of The Musical Offering but this concert needed a bit more zing. What might have helped is members of the ensemble talking a bit about some of the composers or the contexts for which the music was written. Perhaps they thought it might be a naff thing to do in such an august venue, but if Roddy Williams or Andras Schiff do it, why not this ensemble?

So….pleasant enough, but a bit unmemorable and could have been better presented………