La Famille Forqueray

Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699-1782) was a virtuoso violist who, in 1747, published a set of compositions for viola da gamba and accompaniment, ostensibly by his late father Antoine, who had also been an esteemed virtuoso. Forqueray fils subsequently published the same pieces in arrangements for the harpsichord, and two suites of these re-arranged pieces constitute the main meat of this CD.

The specifics of the works' attribution are altogether unclear. Jean-Baptiste took sole credit for a handful of the pieces, and for all of their 'continuo' bass lines, but, it has been argued that the majority of the music may have been his. Father and son had had a difficult relationship, to say the least, and Forqueray jr.'s motives when posthumously disseminating his father's work need not have been pure homage. Aside from that, it has been suggested that the harpsichord arrangements may have been the handiwork of Mme Marie-Rose Forqueray, Jean-Baptiste's second wife, who happened to be a harpsichordist (as his mother Henriette-Angélique had also been).

The original works were composed for the viola da gamba, a cello-sized instrument with a more-or-less baritone range, and the harpsichord arrangments are notable for maintaining that range, predominantly using the lower end of the keyboard, rather than being transposed to a higher register. The resulting music has a booming, growling darkness about it whose flavour is distinct from that of the Forquerays' contemporaries.

The present CD also includes pieces in tribute to the Forquerays by a couple of those contemporaries: François Couperin and Jacques Duphly; as well as some viol music of Antoine's arranged for the harpsichord by Justin Taylor, the performer on this disc. Taylor, pictured on the cover, looks younger than his twenty-five years (as I gather he was then), but does not want for confidence and panache in his performances. The instrument he plays has been beautifully-recorded here, and he makes it sound spectacularly good.

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