{"id":6749,"date":"2016-08-01T10:57:21","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T10:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accademiaclub.com\/producto\/a-piacere-fahmi-alqhai\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T14:19:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:19:53","slug":"a-piacere-fahmi-alqhai","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/accademiaclub.com\/en\/producto\/a-piacere-fahmi-alqhai\/","title":{"rendered":"A Piacere – Fahmi Alqhai"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fahmi Alqhai, A solo<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The dominant instrument, in its countless variants, of the European musical scene for centuries, the viola\u00a0da gamba declined along with the aristocratic world at the end of the 18th century. This not only condemned it to a long period of obscurity but also fixed in the collective imagination a particular aesthetic of the instrument, that of its last period of splendour in the France of Louis XV: an intimate, decadent and melancholy instrument. That image still holds today as the\u00a0essence\u00a0of the instrument.<\/p>\n

And yet \u2013 without, of course, overlooking the appeal of that aesthetic, that repertoire and its model of the instrument \u2013 the countless types, performance styles and repertoires the instrument took on during its almost three centuries of supremacy tend to be pushed into the background. From its beginnings, associated with Morisco musicians in Spain, to the virtuoso Berlin repertoire of the 18th century, by way of Italian diminutions and the English popular repertoire of the 17th century, the viola da gamba lent itself to every imaginable shape, size, scoring and tuning: from the small\u00a0quinton\u00a0to the great violones; from the singing\u00a0jeu de m\u00e9lodie\u00a0to the rich chords of the\u00a0jeu d\u2019harmonie; from the\u00a0lyra viol\u00a0and its endless\u00a0scordature\u00a0to the resonant seven-string viol of Sainte-Colombe; from the solo repertoire to the role of continuo player, the English consort, mixed ensembles with German violins, duets for equal voices, concertos with orchestra\u2026 There was no sonority, social class or musical style to which the viola da gamba was a stranger, and rather than of one instrument we should speak of a whole world of instruments.<\/span><\/p>\n

The generations of viola da gamba players of the second half of the 20th century, with Jordi Savall as their vanguard and symbol, recovered many of those worlds and sonorities and prepared the viola\u00a0da gamba\u00a0to take its place as a full member of the contemporary instrumentarium. Sometimes wrongly seen as a technically limited instrument compared with the violin, the cello or the guitar, the viola da gamba is, on the contrary, a far more flexible instrument, potentially as complete as any of them \u2013 it has no need to imitate them, but it can, and must, compete with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

It therefore falls to the present generation of viola da gamba players to break down barriers \u2013 probably more mental than real: only persevering work can prove it \u2013 and to hand on to the next generation the technical tools and the artistic courage to banish once and for all any trace of an inferiority complex, without giving up the uniqueness of an instrument full of its own particular resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is why, on this CD, the viola da gamba looks from its own particular perspective at repertoires distant in space and time, with no self-imposed artistic or technical limits, making full use of those resources. From 17th-century Spanish music to the most classical repertoire of the French viola da gamba, by way of Bach and Rameau and reaching out towards popular and present-day music, the model of viola da gamba best suited to each repertoire gives us the key to the thousand sonorities hidden in our instrument. Dedication and an open attitude may allow us to break down some barrier and take our instrument one step further, in the hope that the next generation will take up the baton and carry on along the path of its growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

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