Couperin : Pièces de violes. Pandolfo, Chemin.

   in Early Music Today (Jun, 2013)
Couperin’s Pieces de violes consist of two suites of pieces for bass viol and continuo. They were published in 1728 and are among his last compositions. The first suite follows a traditional pattern of a Prelude followed by some of the characteristic movements of the French dance suite. Among the finest of these are an elegiac sarabande and a dance-like passacaille. The second suite contains only four movements and is less typically French in its layout. The focal point is a profoundly affecting ‘Pompe funebre’, a masterpiece in the musical-poetic ‘tombeau’ tradition. Paolo Pandolfo is a wonderfully rhetorical exponent of this beautiful repertoire. The Preludes are freely motivated and unhurried and …