CD REVIEW – THE MARAIS PROJECT : THE GARDEN PARTY : CELEBRATING TWENTY YEARS OF THE MARAIS PROJECT.

The latest CD release  on  Move Records, The Garden Party (MCD 592) from The Marais Project is the group’s seventh to date, celebrating its twentieth anniversary. For two decades, viola da gamba player Jennifer Eriksson has passionately led this early-music-ensemble-with-a-difference. The Marais Project’s long history of concerts and recordings have delighted audiences and attracted a huge range of performers as it has worked on its aim to present all works in Marin Marais’ oeuvre.

This goal has never restricted the promotion of thus composer’s compositions and the viola da gamba on which he was a famous teacher and virtuoso to the mere replica of pure early music environments.        

Jennifer Eriksson has updated the image and profile of her instrument  by continuously updating it in performance and ground-breaking recordings of which The Garden Party is yet one more fine example. The viola da gamba has over the years been included in performances and new arrangements of works from Marais and his contemporaries right through to inclusion in modern world music, new music as well as exciting  pop or jazz music crossover.

The current  Marais Project discography  features the subtleties of this historic string instrument’s diversity constantly being challenged and included in ensembles and works other than the French Baroque of Marais.

The previous six recordings have thrust it into new or changing lights. Eriksson’s playing and eagerness for experiment and collaboration has endeared Marais’ music and chosen instrument to us in a joyous kaleidoscope of musicology, reinvention and tribute to the energy of the focus composer and others and a cornucopia of contrasting musical styles, both historic and contemporary.

Above : Viola da gambist Jennifer Eriksson, founder of The Marais Project. Featured image: Detail from the cover design of The Garden Party CD – artwork by Lyndall Gerlach.

In this vein, The Garden Party boldly starts the anniversary celebration with the fluid and various reference points of its title track. In one of Eriksson’s own compositions, based on the Book IV work by Marais, Feste Champêtre’, we jump into a cosmopolitan and timeless blend of viola da gamba, violin, piano accordian, baroque guitar and double bass.

The viola da gamba as heard in Marais’ composition now speaks with fortified colour and function as the original material is tweaked with more than the occasional jazz twist in a typically delightful Marais Project melting pot.

In a similar vein, accordionist Emily-Rose Šárkova’s  arrangements of works by twentieth-century composers add to the five  new-release tracks on this recording.These Argentine composers’ works joyously conclude the celebration CD and are namely La Anunciácion by Ariel Ramirez and De Fiesta en Fiesta from Carlos Carabajal and the Rios Brothers.

Ending this CD in true party style, here with vocal lines and clapping adding to the successful blend of the same eclectic ensemble as the opening work, a high standard of sound engineering and recording expertise is obvious, giving a clear and well balanced result that is unwavering across the CD.

Above : Emily-Rose Šárkova, piano accordionist on the CD and arranger of three works on ‘The Garden Party’ recording.

As twenty years of The Marais Project concerts and recordings have shown audiences, we can expect to encounter historic instruments in their authentic environment as well as observe them taken way out of their early music comfort zone.

Marais and many composers would love such fresh collaborations and inclusions of instruments such as the viola da gamba with such altered voice in new ensemble opportunities.

Of the nine works included here, four come to us from previous Marais Project recordings. Tender Swedish folk song vocals by Pascal Herrington blend with fine accompaniment of baroque flute, violin, viola da gamba and theorbo in Tommie Andersson’s version of Om sommaren sköna, as released on the fifth CD, Smörgäsbord!

The Marais Project’s third recording, Love Reconciled brings to the party beautiful baroque vocal music from a contemporary of Marain Marais, Pierre Bouteiller. His motet for voice, viola da gamba and theorbo pays homage to works explored in the ensemble’s past to document pure French Baroque style.

The continued contributions over the last twenty years to The Marais Project concerts and CDs by early music experts soprano Belinda Montgomery, cellist Daniel Yeadon and multi-instrumentalist Tommie Andersson (here on theorbo) are highlighted in this selection.

Above : soprano Belinda Montgomery, whose recording of Pierre Bouteiller’s  motet ‘O salutaris hostia’ with viola da gambas and theorbo is included on this anniversary CD.

And what of the music of Marin Marais? We have included three full works lovingly rendered on this CD, from his 4è and 5è livres of 1717 and 1725, as well as his Pièces en Trio from 1692. The Suite No 2 in G minor from this latter publication also comes to this CD from the previous recording, Smörgäsbord!

This beautiful set of tracks included on the recording is classic Marais as Jennifer Eriksson and colleagues have made us familiar with countless times in performances of multi-movement suites and works of Marais. This suite is full of elegant discussion and expressive contrasts within and between movements.

The  inclusion of another Suite in G minor – this time from the 5è livre of Marais, pays tribute again to the Love Reconciled CD. Its multiple movements add Chris Berensen’s harpsichord to this CDs plethora of participating instruments and finely blended tone colours.

The second track on The Garden Party  and second world premiere recording as well is the substantial  Suite in E minor by Marais from Pièces de viole 4è livre. In another quality arrangement by Emily-Rose Šárkova of Marais, this time  for piano accordion and viola da gamba, this innovation impresses on the CD as much as it has audiences in the past.

J’avois crû, from the French publication of airs in 1703 is another impressive shift of colour and pace on this CD’s diverse flow. The track features the engaging voice and violin  lines of Susie Bishop, more recent collaborator with The Marais Project and also from Elysian Fields, the band in which Jenny Eriksson plays electric viola da gamba.

Congratulations to The Marais Project for not only this entertaining CD but for all its live and recorded performances which have been educating Australia and beyond in the French Baroque and its instruments in such a fresh and innovative way over the last twenty years.