Following their delightful programme of chamber cantatas by Clerambault for soprano voice (Naxos, 10/98), Les Solistes du Concert Spirituel perform two further such pieces, these ones for bass. And as on the earlier disc, the vocal items are interspersed with instrumental compositions. The bass, Luc Coadou, has chosen from two of Clerambault’s five anthologies, published between 1710 and 1726. Polipheme comes from the First Book, and La mort d’Hercule from the Third. Coadou is responsive to the many expressive details of text and music and has a fluent understanding of the ornaments and inflexions that characterize French music of the time. But his voice does not always settle comfortably in the centre of his notes, and the pervading tonality is established more by implication than precision. Strikingly declamatory though the Hercules piece is, it is not, perhaps, one of Clerambault’s most inspired cantatas, and certainly not among the most immediately accessible of them. The imagery contained in the Polyphemus text seems to have sparked off Clerambault’s imagination, and, indeed, that of Coadou, more than the other. The giant, tormented by Galatea’s beauty, takes his revenge upon her beloved Acis, with harsh and hopeless consequences. Clerambault paints a touching picture of the Cyclops’s despair in an “Air fort et tendre”, gently accompanied by a flute which perfectly mirrors his melancholy.
The remaining pieces are instrumental “Simphonies”, some of them with fanciful, allusive titles. There are five of them in all, of which La magnifique, once recorded a great many years ago on a Vogue-Counterpoint LP by Bernard Wahl and the Versailles Chamber Orchestra, and La felicite are the most effective. In short, this is a strong follow-up to the previous disc if, on balance, the less even and less satisfying of the two. The author of the booklet-note seems to have entirely disregarded both cantatas; the legends on which each is based, however, having been neatly summarized by another hand. A valuable addition to the catalogue.'