Les Arts Florissants

In the late 1980s, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants recorded a galvanising version of the masterpiece of early English opera: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. This seminal interpretation is now available again, for the first time in digital.

A dark, pessimistic work, Belshazzar casts an uncompromising gaze on the fate of empires and those who govern them. In 2013, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants recorded a noble and majestic account of this formidable oratorio.

Following the acclaim which met their double-album set devoted to the first two books of Gesualdo’s madrigals (2020 Gramophone Award), Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants now focus on the composer’s Ferrara period. ‘

A puzzling paradox: although Vivaldi devoted over 30 years to composing for the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, no complete musical setting of any liturgy by him has come down to us.

With the series "A Life in Music", Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants invite you to trace the artistic career of Johann Sebastian Bach through his creative periods and places of residence. In the first stage, we discover a young master who continues the tradition of sacred concertos in northern Germany, but already reveals an extremely personal and imaginative style.

For the second volume in this series devoted to each new stage in Bach's life, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants show us how the composer appropriated the usages of the church cantata to his own ends.

Wilhelmina Charlotte Caroline von Brandenburg-Ansbach was the wife of King George II of England. She knew Handel when he was a young man in Germany, benefited his career there, and in England stimulated works in which he had all cylinders firing. The Te Deum in D major, HWV 280, was written to mark her arrival in Britain after her father-in-law, George I, became king, and it's a well-known early Handel work written somewhat in the style of Purcell. The King Shall Rejoice, HWV 260, is a brief but splendid anthem written for the coronation of the new king and queen in 1727, and The Ways of Zion Do Mourn, HWV 264, was composed for the queen's funeral in 1737.

In 2015 our most recent Charpentier recording to date, La Descente dOrphée aux Enfers with young soloists and the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, received the Grammy Award for the »Best Opera Production« of the preceding year and Gramophones »Editors Choice.« Our new CD featuring two »mini-operas« by Charpentier again offers enthralling performances of this court music of charming dance character and elegance. In contrast to Charpentiers other operas, Les Plaisirs de Versailles is directly associated with Louis XIV.