Briefly Noted: Accented Bach & Co.

J. S. Bach et al., Concertos, Les Accents, J. Brégnac, E. Laporte, S. Marq, T. Noally (released on August 16, 2019) Aparté AP206 | 70'18"

For many performers, any experience of the Baroque period was often limited to the music of J. S. Bach. Happily, the early music movement exploded the possibilities by opening up the repertory and the ways of understanding it. The historically informed performance ensemble Les Accents, founded by violinist Thibault Noally in 2014, provides an example.

On the group's new disc, two of Bach's violin concertos (BMV 1041 and 1056R) are set against an array of similar concertos for various solo instruments by composers Bach admired: Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729), Johann Gottlieb Graun (1703-1771), Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758), and Christoph Förster (1693-1745). The last composer's Violin Concerto in G Minor receives its premiere recording, and two fine concertos by Georg Philipp Telemann round out the program. Bach does not so much stand out from his surroundings as fit right in.

The playing is all technically superlative and full of character. Noally takes the violin solos, shadowed by his colleague Claire Sottovia in the double-violin concerto of Telemann. The other soloists are even more polished: Jean Brégnac's subdued traverso, Emmanuel Laporte's perky oboe, and the snappy recorder playing of Sébastien Marq. The sound, recorded by Little Tribeca in the Eglise de Bon Secours in Paris in 2017, feels close, so that you get the grit of bow against string, sharp inhalations of the traverso and recorder players, and the sensation of sitting in the front row.