La Rêveuse: L’Enigme Sainte Colombe

The Strad Issue: November 2026

Description: A viola da gamba master comes to life in imaginative performances

Musicians: La Rêveuse

Works: Music by Boyvin, L. Couperin, Geoffroy, Hotman, Méliton, Nivers, Rousseau and Sainte Colombe

Catalogue number: HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902798

La Rêveuse’s latest reverie on the elusive master of the viola da gamba, Sainte Colombe, sets him against the background of his teachers and contemporaries.

As well as the imagination and virtuosity of its performers in bringing this music to life, the disc beguiles with the variety of its instrumental textures – everything from solo theorbo (Benjamin Perrot, playing music by Ste Colombe’s pioneering teacher Hotman with gentle elegance) and Florence Bolton’s characterful solo bass viol with theorbo continuo, to works for two and three viols with Emily Audouin and Andreas Linos.

Ste Colombe’s three Concerts for two viols, works full of invention and variety, reflect his musical world, from Lully overtures to popular airs. There’s a rustic feel to the sound when two bass viols play in duet, as they do at the opening Chaconne, entering with casual confidence.

All four players are required for the transcriptions of organ works by contemporary composers, a common practice at the time. The two treble viols in one such collection, the Symphonie and Gigue by Geoffroy, surprise the listener with their high tessitura after all the earthy bass notes. Perrot’s theorbo continuo transforms the sound of every work it features in, adding fullness and luminosity.

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