**** It is quite something, someone with 'multiple faces' and certainly 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 there are musicians who 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 get to know this lively Frenchman again with the cd 'Trois visages d'Hécate'. Three cantatas that have something of opera that each depict one of the faces and the corresponding characters of the goddess. Soprano Lieselot De Wilde fortunately has only one face, but that does not prevent her from performing in a divine manner and well-versed, both text and music very meticulously so that the listener follows along in the story and the respective 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 splash in the second half of the last century and the first decade of this century by returning to historically justified performances of the Baroque to today. That pioneering spirit has been inherited, as it were, by a young generation that is now making a name for itself and deservedly so. Meanwhile, research into performance practice has advanced even further and can also pay attention to scores that were forgotten under thick layers of dust in attics. Treasure hunters like Korneel Bernolet always know how to track down some of that lost old material and breathe new life into it. Trois visages d'Hécate by Nicolas Bernier is such an achievement.
It can be assumed that some Baroque enthusiasts will find this music somewhat less appealing, because there is only one singer and no dialogues, which might give them a sense of excess. Others will welcome this with open arms, if only because it belongs among the more unique recordings. Unique not only because of the obscurity, but also unique because of the great quality of the performance that on the one hand fits into our hectic society and on the other hand immediately draws us fully into some kind of Baroque decorated environment. Decorating is perhaps one of the best words to describe how the musicians work.
It is a cd for the enthusiasts, a cd for the discoverers and a cd for anyone who wants something different for once than always the big names and the well-known works.
- WHAT: Trois visages d'Hécate by Nicolas Bernier
- WHO: Soprano Lieselot De Wilde, ensemble Apotheosis, direction Korneel Bernolet
- RELEASE: Et'Cetera, KTC 1576