Diamand Ensemble

For more than forty years, Lalande was the French court’s favourite composer, cultivating the most elevated and touching aspects of the spirit of the Grand Siècle. Sébastien Daucé and the Ensemble Correspondances offer us some remarkable examples of his output here: with the imposing Miserere, ample and sombre, the Dies irae and the rarely heard Veni Creator, this ‘Latin Lully’ brought the art of the grand motet to its zenith.

Inspired by the Psyché created collectively by Lully, Molière, Corneille and Quinault, Locke’s Psyche was a veritable artistic firework display: seeking to vie in splendour with the operas of continental Europe, it luxuriously combined theatre, song, dance, and spectacular machines and scenery. Sébastien Daucé here offers us his splendid reconstruction of this key masterpiece in the history of early English opera.

The BBC Singers and conductor David Hill join with one of the world´s oldest continuously running orchestras, The Norwegian Wind Ensemble (NWE), to present this major new arrangement of George Frideric Handel’s most celebrated oratorio – Messiah HWV 56. Arranged for wind ensemble by NWE member Stian Aareskjold, this version here receives its world premiere recording with a stellar cast of soloists who bring this visionary re-scoring of this famous work vividly to life.