Ouverture in D major, op. 13/2

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Composer: Jean-Marie Leclair (b. 1697 - d. 1764)

Performance date: 06/07/2016

Venue: St. Brendan’s Church

Composition Year: 1753

Duration: 00:09:03

Recording Engineer: Richard McCullough, RTÉ lyric fm

Instrumentation Category:Baroque Ensemble

Instrumentation Other: 2vn, va, vc, db, lute, hpd

Artists: Concerto Copenhagen (Antoine Toruncyzk [oboe], Fredrik From, Peter Spissky, Antina Hugosson [violins], Torbjörn Köhl [viola], Judith-Maria Blomsterberg [cello], Kate Hearne [cello, recorder], Marrias Frostenson [bass], Fredrik Bock [theorbo], Marcus Mohlin [harpsichord]) - [baroque ensemble]

Ouverture in D major, op. 13/2 [1753]

Grave – Staccato

Allegro

Andante – Dolce

Allegro

Jean-Marie Leclair is generally recognized as the most prominent and talented French violinist and composer during the reign of Louis XV, credited with having established the French school of violin playing. After studies in Italy with a student of Corelli, he returned to France in 1723 where he played at the Concert Spirituel in Paris until his employment in 1738 by Princess of Orange, Regent of the Netherlands. Leclair returned to Paris once more in 1743 where he served the Duke of Gramont. He remained here until his brutal death in 1764. The composer was found stabbed to death in his Parisian house; although the murder remains a mystery it was suspected that his nephew Guillaume-François Vial was in some way responsible.

Leclair’s Op.13 collection consists of six Ouvertures et Sonates en Trio, at least four of which are arrangements of the composer’s earlier works. Although this to the modern audience may seem like a short-cut, it should be noted that arranging was a longstanding Baroque tradition, about which no eighteenth-century composer held any qualms.

Op.13 is the composer’s final publication, issued in 1753 and like all his publications from his Op.2 Sonatas onwards, engraved by his wife Louise Roussel. The collection is made up of three Ouvertures and three Sonates en trio (which are masterful transcriptions of his three virtuosic solo violin sonatas). The third of the Ouvertures is an arrangement of the Overture to Scylla et Glaucus (1746), the composer’s singular opera. Scholars have speculated that the previous two Ouvertures are also arrangements of incidental music written for Gramont’s theatre.

Op.13/2 is operatically full-bodied, vigorous and exciting, distinctly more dramatic than the composer’s earlier works. It opens with a slow bracing dotted introduction in common time, followed by a rigorous fugal movement. The third movement is slow and stately and a cheerful light-hearted lively movement concludes the Ouvertur

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