La Cetra Barockorchester Basel

Leila Schayegh, La Cetra Barockorchester Basel – Leclair: Concerti per violino (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:11 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Glossa

It’s almost impossible not to be fascinated by the life and music of Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764), such are its colourful contradictions. A career that began as a dancer but which ultimately saw him become one of France’s greatest violinist-composers, famed for not only for his breathtakingly virtuosic technique but also for the exquisite sweetness and good taste of his playing – hence the much-documented 1739 concert showdown in Amsterdam between him and the Italian virtuoso Locatelli, declared a draw after Locatelli played like the devil and Leclair like an angel. Then in the 1740s his abandonment of the violin for an unsuccessful career as an opera composer, followed in time by a move to lodgings in one of Paris’s dodgier areas, and finally being stabbed to death outside his own front door in a murder case that has never been solved.
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La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, Leila Schayegh – Leclair: Violin Concertos (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:08:21 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa

This first part of an ongoing complete set of Leclair’s violin concertos includes Nos. 2 and 6 of the two concert series, Op. VII and X. The Concerto in G minor No. 6, Op. X is often considered to be the composer’s finest work. In this dazzling display of talent, Schayegh plays a late 17th century Andrea Guarneri at the head of La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, which includes Eva Saladin, Konzertmeisterin, and Sonoko Asabuki, third principal violin (Leclair’s concertos often featuring three solo violins).

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La Cetra Barockorchester Basel & Leila Schayegh – Leclair: Violin Concertos, Vol. 2 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:51 minutes | 1,90 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Glossa

With a quartet of violin concertos by Jean-Marie Leclair, Leila Schayegh continues her exploration of the instrument’s repertory, combining musical insight, virtuosic brilliance and historical understanding. Leclair, who grew up in Lyon and studied in Turin before moving to Paris (he held a short-lived official post at Louis XV’s court in the 1730s) produced solo sonatas (and duos) as well as his acclaimed concertos. In her booklet notes, Leila Schayegh, who currently teaches Baroque violin at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, comments on how Leclair – an outstanding violinist himself – was in thrall to the Italian instrumental style but was concerned that his music should not be played too fast; he was praised for his netteté, a combination of impeccable technique and musical perfection. This second volume in Schayegh’s projected series of recordings of the Leclair violin concertos embraces the Nos 1 and 3 works from the two six-concerto series of Opp 7 and 10. For this dazzling new exhibition of the Swiss violinist’s art, Schayegh – who plays a late-seventeenth-century Andrea Guarneri instrument – directs Basel’s La Cetra Barockorchester, which features Eva Saladin as its Konzertmeisterin and Christoph Rudolf as a further principal violinist (Leclair’s concertos often called for up to three soloists).

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