The double Reed (March 2008)

These compositions by Antoine Dard — six sonatas for bassoon and basso continuo, plus other works — show that the composer was quite a bassoonist, and the recording makes clear that Ricardo Rapoport is, too. Dard, born in the small Burgundian town of Chapaize in 1715, rose to become section leader of the bassoons in the Académie royale de musique (the Paris Opera) by 1763. His six sonatas, published in Paris in 1759 as opus 2 (no opus 1 is known), are florid works in four movements: slow-fast-slow-fast. Major-key slow movements are generally in the then-fashionable galant style: light, straightforward, and even sentimental, though often filigreed with ornaments. Minor-key slow movements are more operatic (Telemann's Sonata in F Minor will not be far from the bassoon-playing listener's mind), while fast movements are usually dance-like.
Rapoport uses a reproduction of an early bassoon by Prudent Thieriot, this one made by Olivier Cottet. Its singing cantabile in the tenor range, shading into gruffness in the middle and lower registers, points the way to the sound of later French bassoons by Savary and Buffet, among others. Rapoport achieves a wide dynamic range and maintains a generally high standard of intonation; soft-pedaling low notes, he ends phrases with finesse.
»Dard uses the bassoon as though it were an operatic »bel canto« tenor«, Rapoport writes in his detailed liner notes, »often employing the very high register«. Sure enough, Dard tosses in a high C early in the first sonata, and second later, a D — possibly the earliest known composition demanding these notes from the bassoon. Rapoport smoothly integrates these and other high notes into the melodic line. In doing so, he is apparently aided by a wing key, which is present on a few of the surviving Prudent originals. Such a bassoon is ideally suited to Dard: Prudent became a master maker in 1759 (when most baroque composers were in their graves), and died in 1786.
Rapoport excels in the slow movements (often marked »aria«, »arietta« or »grazioso«), where the bassoon line floats in the tessitura above the bass staff. As he remarks, Dard's score includes »written-out decorations and, most importantly, articulation marks for each note, set down with an obsessive precision.« Rapoport's caressing tone and gentle inflections breathe the thin air on the fragile galant style: appoggiaturas are often long, tapering to a delicate tremblement or trill, while the little ornaments that begin or end so many notes in this style receive the proper featherweight touch. Rapoport is no slouch in the fast movements, however; he handily dispatches the whirlwinds of perpetual motion that Dard included to show off his own technique.
The sonatas are delicious. But lest there be too much of a good thing, the artists intersperse four short vocal works by Dard, sung with appealing freshness by Karine Sérafin. She is accompanied variously and expertly by the flutist François Nicolet, the harpsichordist Pascal Dubreuil, and the bassoonist himself. With this one exception, the performers chose to omit melodic instruments from the continuo, »an increasingly acceptable solution in this period«, Rapoport comments: it allows for »more freedom and fantasy... as well as transparency«. These qualities mark the graceful continuo playing of Dubreuil, whose collaboration with Rapoport is idiomatic and persuasive.
Liner notes and vocal texts in French, English, and German are included.

James Kopp