Pierlot’s gamba plank is like the warm vest you like to pull around you ★★★★☆

There are dozens of recordings of Philippe Pierlot, a Belgian veteran of the viola da gamba. He usually turns up in the Ricercar Consort, which he co-founded in 1980. Only now, at the age of 65, does he take the step to a solo album. Under the title meditation Pierlot brings out a beautiful bouquet of English, French and German gamba music.

It’s sadness trumps in Frobergers Meditation, faite sur ma mort future, a musing on the imminent death. On the harpsichord, the original instrument, this piece already sounds autumnal enough, in his arrangement Pierlot once again puts a mourning veil around it.

Also Tobias Hume and Marin Marais were composers who sometimes suffered from life. Fortunately there is still JS Bach: in two minuets from the First cello suite the sun finally breaks through. Pierlot’s gamba plank, recorded in a Tuscan church, is like the warm vest you like to wrap around you.