Diane Dufresne, Michel Cusson État de Siège (2024)

In this new album, Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot revisit the composer who gave their ensemble its delightful name, ‘La Rêveuse’. Drawing on his heritage (Sainte-Colombe), his friendships (Robert de Visée) and his own visionary genius, Marin Marais blazed new trails for his instrument in his second book of viol pieces (1701). Alongside the customary dances and sets of variations, he invented the ‘character pieces’ that were to become so popular in the eighteenth century.

Michel Legrand's abundantly lyrical soundtrack to Jacques Demy's 1964 movie musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg faithfully evokes the film's predominant theme of young love foiled by adult reality. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg's overriding melancholia finds a voice in two main melodic motifs Legrand uses throughout the soundtrack, the first from the Legrand jazz standard "Watch What Happens" and the second from his song "I Will Wait for You." Legrand's considerable arranging abilities are on display here as he works the recurring themes through a variety of settings: tragic duets cloaked in dramatic string passages, broken-down cabaret soliloquies, and even a tango piece à la Astor Piazzolla. A prevalent jazz waltz theme also seesaws its way through the score, providing a break from the gloom. As with his later Demy soundtrack, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Legrand does integrate jazz into the mix, but not in such pervasive fashion; occasional big-band outbursts and light jazz backgrounds ultimately take a back seat to Legrand's preferred chanson mode. Combining Debussy's opaque melodies and Richard Rodgers song economy, he transforms the whimsical French song of Piaf and Trenet into petite arias. For Legrand it comes down to the song, and there are plenty of good ones on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Another throwback project with the pioneering trailblazing conductor of early repetoires Joel Cohen, paired with the Camerata Mediterranea, an ensemble promoting intercultural dialogue between both sides of the sea, he recorded this beautiful program centered on the love songs of Bernard de Ventadour, the greatest troubadour of his time. Each song alternes with an Occitan poem by Uc de Saint-Circ relating the adventurous sentimental live of Bernard.

This album compares hits from the Renaissance (by Rore, Lasso, Arcadelt and others) with their instrumental ornamented arrangement published in 1591 by Venetian Giovanni Bassano, author of a reference treatise on arrangement. It also includes some Paladino transcriptions for solo lute, performed by Anthony Bailes.