**** It is quite something, someone with 'multiple faces' and especially if it is a goddess. Hecate was in that case. It inspired around the year 1700 and thereafter writers, composers and performing musicians in France who united a new genre of poetry and music. One of those composers was Nicolas Bernier. Even now musicians have been inspired with Korneel Bernolet as the driving force in that inspiration.
No worries if you don't know the baroque composer Nicolas Bernier, because it is the merit of Korneel Bernolet that we learn to know this nimble Frenchman again with the cd 'Trois visages d'Hécate'. Three cantatas that have something of opera which each depict one of the faces and the corresponding characteristics of the goddess. Soprano Lieselot De Wilde fortunately only has one face, but that does not stop her from performing in a divine way and well-rehearsed, both text and music very carefully, so that the listener is drawn into the story and the corresponding face of the goddess.
She is accompanied and supported by the ensemble Apotheosis, one of the younger ensembles that play perfectly and continue the path of our Flemish and other pioneers who made a furore in the second half of the last century and the first decade of this century by returning to historically informed performances from baroque to the present day. That pioneering spirit has as it were been inherited by a young generation that is now gaining renown and deservedly so. Meanwhile, research into performance practice has advanced even further and attention can also be given to scores that were forgotten under thick layers of dust in attics. Sleuths like Korneel Bernolet always know how to track down such lost old material and breathe new life into it. Trois visages d'Hécate by Nicolas Bernier is such an achievement.
It is to be assumed that some baroque enthusiasts will like this music less, because there is only one singer and there are no dialogues which may give them a sense of excess. Others will welcome this with open arms, if only because it belongs to the more unique recordings. Unique not only because of the obscurity, but also unique because of the great quality of the performance which on the one hand fits in with our hectic society and on the other hand immediately draws us fully into some baroque decorated environment. Decorating is perhaps one of the best words to describe how the musicians go about their work.
It is a cd for enthusiasts, a cd for discoverers and a cd for anyone who wants something different from the big names and well-known works.
- WHAT: Trois visages d'Hécate by Nicolas Bernier
- WHO: Soprano Lieselot De Wilde, ensemble Apotheosis, conducted by Korneel Bernolet
- RELEASE: Et'Cetera, KTC 1576
