Garth Knox, Agnès Vesterman, Sylvain Lemêtre - Saltarello (2012)

Many instrumental compositions in music history, even if they’re called sonata, suite, sinfonia or even fantasia, are essentially dances or else exhibit an unmistakable dancelike character. Not a few examples of so-called art music also have their origins in the folk music of a particular country or make use of popular or folk elements. Under the title “Saltarello”, a 14th-century fast Italian dance in ¾ time that survives today as a folk dance, viola player Garth Knox couples works stretching from the 12th century to the present day and demonstrates how fragile, even arbitrary, is the line drawn between art and folk music, but also that between old music and new sounds. Taking up fiddle, viola and viola d’amore, accompanied by cellist Agnès Vesterman and percussionist Sylvain Lemêtre, Knox presents his own works alongside music by Hildegard von Bingen; he juxtaposes the exquisite Renaissance sounds of John Dowland against pieces by Kaija Saariaho that make subtle use of electronics, and sets arrangements of traditional melodies and anonymous dance movements against Vivaldi’s D minor Viola d’amore Concerto – a sensuous survey of 1000 years of musical events.