Concerts

Before the Guillotine – Peter Wendland, Jacqui Robertson-Wade, Ibrahim Aziz and Lynda Sayce  – more concert dates coming soon!

“Beautiful music and talented musicians.”

“You played so well together, your ensemble sounded like one instrument.”

“I was transported  to a different time and place. Splendid!  Thank you.”

Played on orginal viols and cello, with theorbo, our programme starts in France at the end of 17th century, with the rise in popularity of the violin and the pardessus de viole, with music by Marais, Hotteterre, Leclair, Morel, Dandrieu, Corelli, Bouin and Corrette.  We explore taste and fashion in music with these tiny viols during the 18th century up until the French Revolution in 1789 as well as the bass viol, with the beautiful Pièces à trois violes by Jean-Baptiste Antoine Forqueray.  Our programme also includes the mesmerizing bells of the Sonnerie de Sainte Geneviève du Mont de Paris, arranged by Jean-Pierre Villeneuve in 1759 for pardessus de viole.

The violin shaped viol, the quinton, shared the same repertoire as the pardessus de viole and developed sometime after the opening in 1725 of the first French series of public concerts, the Concert Spirituel. In the spacious hall of the Palais des Tuileries, the quinton could project, unlike the beautifully resonant, but quieter, flat-backed pardessus de viole.

Michelle Corrette said of the Quinton: “The quinton has a delightful sound because it possesses the fluted high register of the pardessus de viole and the sonorous bass register of the violin – it sounds much better than an ordinary pardessus, the table being less loaded with strings.”