Jean-Marie Leclair: Sonatas For 2 Violins – Harmonie Universelle – Florian Deuter / Mónica Waisman

   in Early Music Today (Jun, 2015)
‘It’s a genuine disgrace that members of the baroque fraternity adopt any number of trifling figures with whoops of excitement, while the output of this great violinist still remains to be rediscovered time and again.’ Nearly a decade has elapsed since Reinhard Goebel lamented our neglect of Leclair in his CD-notes for Harmonie Universelle’s 2006 recording of the op.3 sonatas for two violins, yet even last year’s 250th anniversary of Leclair’s death – a brutal, unsolved murder – failed to spark a major revival of interest, though it presumably played a part in the release of these CDs.

Leclair was not only one of the 18th century’s greatest violinists – he …