Composer: Michel-Richard de Lalande
Performer: Virginia Warnken, Molly Netter, Aaron Sheehan, Sophie Michaux, John Taylor Ward, Brian Giebler, Margot Rood, Jesse Blumberg, Olivier Laquerre, Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble
Conductor: Paul O’Dette, Stephen Stubbs
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: CPO
Catalogue: 555097-2
Release: 2020
Size: 659 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Les Fontaines de Versailles
01. Ouverture
02. D’où vient que dans ces lieux
03. Arrête ici, mon fils
04. Venez, venez
05. Déesse on attendait ici votre présence
06. Arbres, jardins
07. Jeunes Zéphyrs
08. Chaconne
09. Je suis ce géant malheureux
10. Il est donc de retour
11. Pour jouir quelques fois de sa noble présence
12. Plaintes, regrets
13. Qu’on ne parle plus de tristesse !
14. Déesse nous voici
15. Heureux séjour
16. Finissons nos concerts !
17. Je goûte la douceur de mon heureux partage
18. Finissons nos concerts, finissons nos concerts !
La grande pièce royale S161
19. Un peu lent
20. Fugato
21. Doucement
22. Gracieusement
23. Gayement
24. Vivement
Le Concert D’Esculape
25. Ouverture
26. Esculape aujourd’hui triomphe du tombeau
27. Apollon qui chérit sa science profonde
28. Simphonie de violons et flûtes – Dans ce qu’il entreprend la nature timide
29. Il est le choix du plus grand des Monarques
30. Publions ses vertus et qu’aucun ne s’étonne
Michel-Richard de Lalande is regarded as one of the great composers of the French Baroque, and so it is not surprising that our prizewinning Boston Early Music Ensemble has now turned to him. Along with his many sacred works, Lalande also wrote for the various court occasions that required secular music. Les Fontaines de Versailles, the work occupying a central position on this CD, above all contributed to Lalande’s increasing popularity. It was performed on 5 April 1683, some weeks before Lalande was appointed to the coveted post of ‘Sous-maître de Chapelle.’ After the court had settled in Versailles with King Louis XIV in 1682, its musical microcosm also experienced a renewal. Les Fontaines de Versailles numbered among Lalande’s efforts to produce an oeuvre perfectly tailored for Versailles, both in its form as well as in its poetic content, thereby demonstrating his skill as a composer of ‘French music’ and displaying it in a proper light for the king. It is with refined sophistication that Les Fontaines de Versailles evokes the special relationship between the king and his gardens. Lalande beyond doubt occupied the first place among Louis XIV’s favorites: in 1689 the king named the thirty-one-year-old his »Surintendant de la Musique de la Chambre,« a post that before only Jean-Baptiste Lully and then one of his sons had held.