Dr. Juliette Engel

Has there ever been a singer like Juliette Gréco? Her voice embodies the entirety of French romanticism, its cabaret sensibilities and the dramas of its pride, heartbreak, and openness. While many singers from the same era have rated extremely lavish box sets – and some from the age after even more (Serge Gainsbourg has had no less than four) – she languishes as a forlorn superstar, loved by millions yet critically dismissed outside of her native land.

The Quatuor Voce presents Poétiques de l’instant, a long-term project and a diptych of recordings that aim to combine two of the key works in the repertory of any string quartet – the masterpieces of Debussy and Ravel – with other pieces of music and new compositions. This first instalment focuses on Debussy’s Quartet and the Quatuor Voce has enlisted a young composer, Yves Balmer, for the works that revolve around it: he has arranged the Proses lyriques song cycle and has also composed a new piece, Fragments soulevés par le vent. To record this programme, the quartet has chosen to perform alongside three exceptional artists, the soprano Jodie Devos, the flautist Juliette Hurel and the harpist Emmanuel Ceysson.

It is easy to imagine Bach taking advantage of the accordion’s unlimited potential: its malleable and boundless dynamics, in direct contact with the bellows; its registers, comparable to those of an organ; its sophisticated buttonboard, which allows for virtuoso playing; and its great musical agility, like that of a chest organ. Of course, Bach would also have perceived the accordion’s limitations stemming from the dynamic uniformity of the right and left hands, but which a skilful player can offset. He might even have tapped Bogdan Nesterenko on the shoulder, asking him to put down his accordion and let him try out this amazing new instrument. And despite Bach’s incredible gifts, he probably would have handed it back quickly, after realizing how very difficult it is to play!

Dans la nudité de Juliette, ainsi qu'en un vase de myrrhe, sont encloses toutes les femmes que l'histoire et la fiction livrent à nos étreintes magiques : Isabeau de Bavière, Béatrix Cenci, Catherine Howard, Luisa Sigea, la marquise de Merteuil, Pauline Borghèse…

The Antoniana Library in Padua holds a manuscript called Cantate alla virtù della Signora Maria Pignatelli. A true vocal anthology of the early 18th century, this period canzoniere contains forty-eight secular cantatas, almost all unpublished, by seventeen composers from the great artistic centres that Italy had around 1700: Rome and the Papal States (Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna), the Duchy of Milan, Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, and Venice.