Album of Quintets by Boccherini from Les Ombres

courtesy of PIAS

My first serious encounter with the music of Luigi Boccherini came during my student days when I was a Musical Heritage Society (MHS) subscriber. MHS released an album of quintets, which introduced me to the change in sonorities arising from adding a second cello to a string quartet. Boccherini was a great admirer of the string quartets of Joseph Haydn, but his own preferred instrument was the cello. So, while the Boccherini catalog includes almost 100 string quartets, it also includes more than 100 string quintets.

However, as they say on television, that’s not all. He also explored expanding the string quartet by adding an instrument distinct from three quartet instruments. Last month the French Mirare label released a Boccherini quintet album of performances by the Les Ombres chamber ensemble on which the additional instrument was either a flute or a guitar. This includes three of the quintets from the Opus 19 collection of six flute quintets and two of the nine guitar quintets, one of which further expands the quintet with a percussionist.

That last selection is probably the best known of the offerings on this album. It is often referred to as the “Fandango” quintet, named after the title of the last of the four movement. That title refers to a dance form that originated on the Iberian peninsula, which would traditionally be accompanied by guitars, castanets, or simple hand-clapping. Thus, the percussion instruments (castanets and tambourine) were added to the quintet to provide “local color.” This would have added an “entertainment factor” to Boccherini’s eighteenth-century listeners; and the quintet has entertained audiences ever since then. It would also explain why the performers decided to give their album the title Une nuit à Madrid (a night in Madrid).

The Les Ombres quartet musicians on this album are violinists Théotime Langlois de Swarte and Sophie de Bardonnèche, violist Marta Paramo, and cellist Hanna Salzenstein. They are joined by Romaric Martin on guitar and Sylvain Sartre on flute. The percussionist is Marie Ange Petit, playing her own rhythms, which were included in and edition of the score that Les Ombres used.

All this makes for a listening experience rather more engaging in sonorities than what one tends to encounter in strings-only chamber music. The performers themselves work from an engaging repertoire of phrasing techniques, determined to convince the attentive listener that this is more than just another album of eighteenth-century chamber music. From a personal point of view, the album allowed me a fresh encounter with an old friend that had been away from my attention for far too long.