Elusive Rococo at BATA

Migot, Pastorale

All of a sudden the dramatic architecture of the Bata Shoe Museum is looking a little conservative compared to the ROM’s Crystal! It’s a great museum to visit and keep an eye on for unusual upcoming events and I was delighted by this quiet Rococo display room, with its shoe-box (oh, that’s a joke!) proportioning and resultant live acoustic, as you can hear in this recording.

Georges Migot I will always associate with Paris. When I travel, I like to sniff out a print-music souvenir, and the one time I was in Paris a few years ago, I set aside an afternoon to visit the Mecca of Music Stores for flutists the world over: Alphonse Leduc. It was tough making a selection, especially since I had gotten lost (there’s worse things, I guess, than being lost in Paris!) and the store was about to close by the time I arrived. This work for solo flute by Migot (1891-1976) is like a friend I am still pleasantly getting to know!

This is the middle of the the three short pieces, the tranquil ‘Pastorale’, that if not directly from the Rococo Period, then at the very least it’s elegance and charm evoke the time and place when these shoes actually would have been worn.

For some legit Rococo, try this warehouse recording, keeping in mind that this KPE Bach was recorded alone after dark, kneeling in the gloom with the music illuminated by flashlight…!