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BCD Anchor, ancor ... : Musiques virtuoses et improvisees pout Cornet a Bouquin. Le Concert Brisé, William Dongois, cornetto. Info. a class="Normal" href="http://www.le-concert-brise.com">www.le-concert-brise.com or
Recorded June 2004.
L'Âge D'Or du Cornet a Bouquin [the Golden Age of the Cornett]; Le Concert Brisé, William Dongois, cornetto. K617. K617187/3. Distributed by Harmonia Mundi. Available at www.lecourent.org.
Recorded June 27-July 1, 2005.
William Dongois has recently released a truly impressive collection of recordings with his ensemble Le Concert Brisé. Anchor, ancor ... is a single CD of 17th-century Italian repertoire with such composers as Bassani, Dalla Casa, Ferrari, and Barbarino represented.
L'Age D'Or is a 3-disk set. Volume 1 is an anthology of Italian dances, diminutions, improvisations, and sonatas. Volume 2 is music by composers associated with Venice in the time of Monteverdi. Volue 3 is music by Buxtehude.
Dongois plays with elegance and charming phrasing while offering the listener breath-taking technical virtuosity. Although the single CD has little in the way of liner notes (all of which are only in French), the 3-volume collection offers lengthy essays (in English and French) on the history of the cornetto, its repertoire, and the practice of improvisation. The third volume is all transcriptions of works by Buxtehude which Dongois offers as examples of selections which virtuoso players of the day might have played.
He is joined by Stefan Legee on sackbut for volume 3. Legee's instrument was made by Edward Meinl after Drewelwecz, 1595. Dongois plays a variety of cornetti made by Christoph Schuler (at 465 and 490), Serge Delmas (465), Henri Gohin (520), and John McCann (440).
One is both amazed at the amount of work which went into this immense project of recordings and inspired by Dongois' dazzling technical display. All of these recordings deserve the highest attention of HBS members.
--- Jim Miller
