Celebrated as one of the most outstanding contemporary violists through his association with the Ensemble InterContemporain and the Arditti Quartet Music and his work as a soloist, Garth Knox turns his attention to the viola d’amore for the first ECM disc issued under his name. In Knox’s hands this almost-forgotten baroque instrument takes on a new life as he applies it to music from 1600 to the present day. Repertoire includes music by Tobias Hume and Marin Marais from the 17th century, by Attilio Ariosti from the 18th century, by Klaus Huber and Roland Moser from the 20th, and by Knox himself from the 21st. Garth also offers arrangements of folk music from Celtic sources that connects to his own Irish/Scottish heritage. A wonderful programme superbly played by Knox and French cellist Agnès Vesterman.
D'Amore
Garth Knox, Agnès Vesterman
- 1Malor me bat (for viola d'amore and violoncello)
09:16 - 2Les Folies d'Espagne
10:35 - Manners of Speaking
-
- 4Anecdote02:45
- 5A Pavin
06:45 - Prima Lezione
- 6Allegro04:16
- 7Largo04:12
- 8Andante02:09
- 9Celtic Dance
01:36 - 10I Once Loved a Lass - Jig
02:35 - 11...Plainte... (for viola d'amore)
05:15
His juxtapositions of old and new and of “popular” and more abstract music develop into a poetic journey through time and space, that – in spite of an ever-present underlying melancholy – leaves plenty of space for humour, playfulness and sheer virtuosity. As a bass imposes itself for reasons of harmony and balance, Knox wrote additional cello parts for all the pieces he arranged himself. They are played here by French cellist Agnès Vesterman. The extraordinary sound of the duo is captured in the generous acoustics of the Austrian monastery St. Gerold, one of ECM-producer Manfred Eicher’s favourite recording locations, especially for early and baroque chamber music.
In his performer’s note to the present recording Knox tells the story of his first encounters with this soft and discreet instrument that has always been confined to the small chamber due to its softness and already by 1800 had become some kind of curiosity – considered an anachronism in the age of dawning industrialisation. Some afternoons spent in a studio in Italy kick-started a coup de foudre-love affair: “I was quickly seduced by the gentle sweet sound of the seven playing strings (so rich in harmonics) and intrigued by the mysterious presence of the seven sympathetic strings that add an intimate resonance that happens on the playing strings”, writes Knox. He once described these resonating strings as a “kind of memory” for the instrument: “Everything that is played on the normal strings leaves acoustic traces in the sympathetic strings – not a straight echo, but a kind of harmonically encoded souvenir”.
While in the 18th century this effect was perceptible only in very small rooms, Garth Knox has developed an electronic way of amplifying only the sympathetic strings with the regular strings left with their original sound. This effect is employed in his musical-theatre project “Jeux de Mémoires”, directed by Emmanuèle Stochl that, by building an entire system of references, resonances and memories, carries Knox’s obsession with the Viola d’amore to even higher symbolic and metaphorical levels…
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