La Viole d’Or
Stephen Moran, Viola da gamba & Gabriel Smallwood, Harpsichord

Celebrating the extraordinary expressive world of the viola da gamba, La Viole d’Or brings together masterpieces from the instrument’s golden age. At the French court, the gamba came to embody a world of elegance and refinement in the poetic music of Marin Marais, while Antoine Forqueray introduced a fiery virtuosity, wit, and dramatic intensity. Together, their music reveals an instrument of remarkable contrasts: intimate and grand, tender and intense, graceful and dazzling.

Bach’s G-minor Sonata completes the picture, placing the gamba within the musical landscape of eighteenth-century Germany and revealing its affinity with the rhetorical and contrapuntal world of Bach. In the hands of Stephen Moran and Gabriel Smallwood, viol and harpsichord create a world of shimmering colors and golden light, bringing to life the many voices of this extraordinary instrument in its full splendor.

Broadcast on WKCR 89.9 FM Friday, December 18

Viola da gamba
Stephen Moran

Harpsichord
Gabriel Smallwood