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  • Boccherini : String quintet G 361, first recording.

     

    Hi,

     

    I have recorded a new unpublished quintet by Boccherini which I think is important. Everything is done with Vienna Instruments Pro.

     

    Here is the link :

     



     

    I hope you will love this work as much as I do!

     

    Greetings


  • last edited
    last edited

    NEW LINKS :

    1. Allegro https://youtu.be/CfekHrEUfuQ"> https://youtu.be/OnphSmnUwIk

    2. Andantino con semplicità https://youtu.be/4Pfgi-AzcC8">



    3. Tempo di minuetto https://youtu.be/CfekHrEUfuQ"> https://youtu.be/OnphSmnUwIk


    4. Finale Allegro giusto https://youtu.be/4Pfgi-AzcC8">


    NEW QUINTET ( G 369) :




  • Bravo, Jacques! What a huge project you've undertaken with this work of Boccherini - very well done and congratulations! 

    What impressed me in particular is that we can not only enjoy this music without further ado, but also gain some stimulating insights into its historical-cultural context, thanks to your accompanying remarks in YouTube.

    I'm certainly no music historian, nor indeed any kind of historian. Yet I love to muse over historiographical opinions concerning possible sources of the creative perfidy which can move the fine arts into new avenues, new currents and new resting places. Thanks to your insights I'm now able to consider Boccherini as one whose gentle, warm, benign and very humanly perfidious approach to composition very probably contributed significantly to the 'steering' of certain currents in developments of musical style bracketed by Monteverdi and Beethoven, and onwards into the Romantic period itself.

    Monteverdi believed firmly that music must "move the whole man"; his works were a powerful and healthy counterweight against the rise of overly rational and technically oriented styles during the emergence of European modernity. And I'm now beginning to see how Boccherini's emotionally vibrant, heartfelt melodic dimensions did much to help lift 18th century music out of becoming too 'modernistically' narrow and arid. My thanks again to you.


  • Thank you very much, Macker, for your compliments and your very interesting comment. It gives me great pleasure that I have been able to influence your judgement of Boccherini in a positive way. In the past, when I was interested in Haydn, I found him underrated. I don't think that's the case anymore. Boccherini is even more underrated and he is certainly the composer who has been most unfairly treated. The lack of objectivity of many musicologists has done considerable damage.

    As far as my recording is concerned, I must say straight away that I started to record some of his works because they had never been recorded. I could never have enough of this genius' works. After devouring all the works recorded on CDs and LPs, I wanted to know the other works because I knew there were dozens of others that would be great works or masterpieces. He left a very homogeneous output with very few banal works, as is the case with Beethoven.

    My recordings are therefore only of musicological interest: they are far from perfect and only serve to give an idea of the work. I still have many works to discover and making these recordings requires a considerable amount of time. So I cannot go into too much detail as I would like to. The most important things for me are the choice of tempi, the interpretation, the emphasis on important elements and the balance of respective volumes. I have a lot of problems with the sound itself because I don't always get what I want. For example, the first violin passage in the Allegro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfekHrEUfuQ) at 00:17 is very unpleasant to me because it sounds very artificial, but I have not been able to do better. Also, I understand perfectly well that your criticisms concern the sound itself. If you worked in depth on the 5 instruments, you could get amazing results. This is obvious when you see what Guy Bacos or some users on the forum have done.


  • Many thanks Jacques for affording me that perspective on your noble and passionate mission concerning the works of Boccherini. And yes, I also lament the untold mischief and harm inflicted on the arts by the poor intellectual integrity of all too many modern academics.

    Please disregard my (now deleted) comments regarding your technical production - I have absolutely no wish to impede or add to the already dauntingly colossal amount of effort involved in your mission.

    I find it so rare these days to encounter such admirable and inspiring passion.

    Wishing you all good fortune in your endeavour.


  • Thank you very much, Macker, for those kind words.

    There was no need to delete your criticism but I really appreciate this sensitivity on your part. If I didn't accept criticism, I wouldn't be posting in this forum and criticism is a good thing. On the other hand, I understand your gesture perfectly because musicians are often very sensitive, especially in our time which is characterized by a hypertrophy of the ego, one of the causes of which is certainly the narrative of the mainstream which makes the population believe that everyone can be an artist!

     

    Thank you for the phrase by Monteverdi, which I did not know. We find this same concern in Boccherini ("... se avrò fatto qualche cosa di buono, non lo so: so bene che la Musica è fatta per parlare al cuore dell'huomo, ed a questo m'ingegno di arrivare se posso: la Musica senza affetti, e Passioni, è insignificante; da qui nasce, che nulla ottiene il compositore senza gl'esecutori : questi è necessario che siano ben affetti all'autore, poi devono sentire nel cuore tutto ciò che questi à notato; unirsi, provare, indagare, studiar finalmente la mente dell'autore, poi eseguirne le opere. Allora si che arrivano quasi a togliere l'applauso al compositore, o almeno a partir la gloria col lui, mentre che, se è pregio sentir dire, "che bell'opera è questa!" parmi che sia di più sentire aggiungere, "oh, che angelicamente l'anno eseguita!" "(*) but also in Beethoven (his famous phrase: "Vom Herzen, möge es wieder, zu Herzen gehen!").

    What is interesting is that these three composers are known for their originality or modernism. You are right to insist on the emergence of technique and modernity, because this is a fundamental problem in art, and what makes Beethoven an extraordinary genius whom no one has been able to match, IMO, is precisely the fact that he was able to marry the highest intellectualism with the most profound musical expression. The time of Boccherini is important because, with Haydn, we witness an intellectual orientation of music. This is not without danger, and only geniuses are able to avoid the aridity that can result (not always!).

     

    (*) I couldn't help going to the end of the sentence because in this letter dated 1799, Boccherini clearly shows that he was the first to understand the importance of performers, thus anticipating Romanticism.


  • Hi,

    I've just noticed that Raphael Feye has posted a version of the quintet G 361 that the Karski Quartet has just recorded ( search in YouTube : "Boccherini G 361") as « World Premiere recording". I think it's not uninteresting to compare it with my old recording, as it was made entirely with Vienna.

    Greetings
    Jacques