About
Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde is an internationally active historical cellist, soloist, and researcher. She is Professor of Historical Cello at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and appears regularly as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral principal with leading period-instrument ensembles across Europe, North America, and Asia. A prize winner at major international competitions, she has recorded more than twenty albums for labels including Alpha Classics, Challenge Classics, and Pentatone. Her debut solo recording From Mannheim to Berlin received a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. She co-directs the early music ensemble Postscript and is co-creator of Romantic Lab, a research platform devoted to 19th-century performance practice.
Francesco Geminiani: a second CD solo CD with Postscript
BBC Music Magazine ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What first intrigued me about Geminiani as a musical figure was his propensity for unpredictable, asymmetrical and improvisatory style—both as a composer and as a performer. If his tempo rubato was apparently too wild for the Neapolitan musicians, his performances were greatly admired for their elegance and taste in England. My everlasting fascination with tempo rubato and the art of “reading between the lines” in terms of tempo, flexibility and rhythmic variations have led me to approach Geminiani’s music with this angle in mind. Moreover, during the recording sessions, many musical aspects—such as ornamentation, continuo realization, and dynamics—were intentionally left to the musicians’ extemporaneous decisions. We used the diversity of colors found in the various instruments forming the continuo group (harpsichord, cello, cello piccolo, violone, theorbo) to create different textures for each movement. Almost like in jazz, each instrument is given its moment to come to the foreground and emerge from the sound of the group.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/PostscriptEnsemble
Members of Postscript:
Victor García García, cello continuo, cello piccolo
Michele Pasotti, theorbo
Artem Belogurov, harpsichord
Margaret Urquhart, violone
Debut CD! From Mannheim to Berlin: Sonatas for cello piccolo
Gramophone Editor’s Choice!
Read the review →
In 2018, I acquired a beautiful Baroque cello labeled J. M. Alban, fecit 17… a Graz. The instrument is of a smaller size than today’s standard cello, and the sound is silky, malleable and rich. I had heard of the existence of four-string violoncello piccolos (tuned G-d-a-e’) during the 17th and 18th centuries, and soon I decided to try this tuning on my small 18th-century cello. The result was impressive: the instrument’s tone became bright, crystalline and colourful, with an enhanced singing quality on the top string. This new voice of the Alban was an exciting discovery, and I set my mind to recording a full programme featuring my four-string violoncello piccolo.
With works by JCF Bach, C. Schaffrath, F. Benda, A. Filtz, and JB Zyka.
Available for purchase:
https://challengerecords.com/products/16845007040023/from-mannheim-to-berlin-sonatas-for-violoncello-piccolo?tab=2
Musicians:
Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde, cello piccolo
Artem Belogurov, fortepiano
Victor García García, cello (in F. Benda and JB Zyka)
