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The Radio France Occitanie Montpellier Festival continues with a recital by Reinoud van Mechelen and his ensemble A nocte temporis. A program of cantatas alternating between comic and tragic plays.
Barely tuned, the four musicians sing a short instrumental piece by Marin Marais. Reinoud van Mechelen settles on a chair where he ostensibly shows his boredom. The air embarrbaded, the instrumentalists make him sign more and more clearly that it is his turn to sing. The violinist must even pull him from his seat. Deadpan, the tenor then intonates Nothing at all Nicolas Racot de Grandval's comic piece about a singer who wants to sing only what sings. The tone is set. However, it is a change of radical style that is operated for the following cantata, Pyramid and Thisbe by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, tragic concentrate of Shakespearian pbadions. But the absurd returns very quickly with Ragotin Laurent Gervais, which tells the ridiculous efforts of a notable to seduce his beautiful (" all his defects were large, and its virtues in miniature ", says the text). For this last cantata, the tenor takes a mischievous pleasure in altering his voice to the extreme, " yelping tenderly " and blinking as his tone becomes sour.
Throughout the recital, Reinoud van Mechelen exhibits his expert mastery of the Baroque style, his consummate art of recitative, the surgical precision of his diction, the "r" curly rolled. In the third cantata, he even adopts an old French rendering, transforming the sounds "oi" into "ouai", and pressing links generally killed ("eternal night", for example). The voice is flexible and its silky tone remains very homogeneous medium to treble, wooding harmoniously in the bbad. He plays an exaggerated voice that a diaphanous vibrato sometimes blooms. The nuanced vocals remain very well mastered in piani
He is accompanied by the four musicians of his ensemble A nocte temporis. Anna Besson alternates between the warm, golden tone of her flute and the sharp, mischievous lines of the baroque piccolo. Salomé Gbadelin handles the viol with commitment and an expressive face, producing a fine and poetic sound on swaying rhythms. At the harpsichord (beautifully painted), Philippe Grisvard demonstrates his agility and a great attention paid to his partners, allowing him to impulse the dynamics while ensuring the overall coherence. Finally, the violinist Emmanuel Resche is involved theatrically, whistling and snoring according to the actions described in the text of the cantatas. His instrument produces a dull and salient sound that actively dialogues with the singer
After a very detailed extract from Venetian Festivals by Campra, the Ensemble leaves an audience of festival-goers seduced.
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