Les Cris de Paris

Créé à Paris en 1978, la même année que les Arts Florissants, l'Ensemble Clément Janequin se consacre en priorité à la musique profane et sacrée de la Renaissance, de Josquin à Monteverdi. Son inimitable interprétation de la chanson parisienne du XVIe siècle a fait redécouvrir un des âges d'Or de l'histoire de la musique française, ses enregistrements Les Cris de Paris, , , , et La Chasse chez harmonia mundi faisant figure de référence.

Even with the advent of LP's, Honegger's music was hard to find on records. The efforts of Charles Munch, and a few recordings which made something of a stir, such as La Danse des Morts, which was graced by the actor Jean-Louis Barrault's inimitable elocution, were more or less one-off successes. Then René Challan and Georges Tzipine came along and made Honegger's major works the centerpiece of their French music anthology, which this series of Rarissimes is gradually restoring to the catalogue. King David, which the composer himself had already recorded, and Joan of Arc at the Stake, championed in a visionary interpretation by Luis de Vocht and his Brussels forces (in a barely veiled protest against the German yoke), were unfortunately nor part of the project. Tzipine wanted to record Nicolas de Flue straight away. This is the last panel (coming after Jeanne au Bücher and the Danse de Morts) of the tryptich of oratorios from the 1940's, and the only one of the three at that time still unrecorded.

by Jean-Charles Hoffelé
translated by Hugh Graham

Founded in Paris in 1978 the Ensemble Clément Janequin devotes itself principally to the secular and religious music of the Renaissance. Its interpretations of the Parisian chanson are regarded as authoritative, and recordings of works like Les Cris de Paris, Le Chant des Oyseaulx, Fricassée Parisienne and La Chasse have brought back to life one of golden ages of French music. Now available to a wide audience, the music of Janequin, Sermisy, Anthoine de Bertrand, Costeley, Roland de Lassus and Claude Le Jeune illustrates the contrasts in which the Renaissance took such delight…

This four disc set from Erato opens with Gluck’s three act lyric tragedy Iphigénie en Aulide, his first original ‘French’ opera for the fashionable Paris Opéra. In 1773 Gluck had been persuaded that he could establish himself at the Paris Opéra (also known as L’Opéra) by François du Roullet, an attaché at the French Embassy in Vienna. Baille du Roullet provided Gluck with the libretto for Iphigénie en Aulide, based on the tragedy of Racine and founded on the play of Euripides. Initially the Director of L’Opéra hesitated in accepting Gluck’s score. Fortunately he had a influential ally in Marie-Antoinette, the Queen of France, to whom he had taught singing and harpsichord. The first staging of Iphigénie en Aulide was at the Paris Opéra in 1774.

The music of Saint-Preux is universal and timeless, combining classical,popular and contemporary musical trends, with worldsales of more than thirty millions records. A small village in France is the setting for his musical inspirations and developments. It is there that he composed his first piece for organ at the age of 6.

The first recording of Rameau's sublime masterwork on CD for more than 20 years: Hugo Reyne and La Simphonie du Marais present this full and original version based on souces in the library of the Paris Opera. Hugo Reyne, Nicolas Sceaux and La Simphonie du Marais have made their own edition of this seminal work, recorded in concert and rehearsal in the Vienna Konzerthaus at the Rexonzanzen Festival in January 2013.

What if Vivaldi’s famous Quattro Stagioni, performed in Paris in 1728, had been preceded by those of Guido, the star violinist of the Parisian orchestras of Louis XIV’s maturity ? Here, at last, are these two works reunited: to the well-known virtuosity of Vivaldi’s work, of extraordinary impact, Guido’s Seasons oppose a mixture of Italian features and a thousand facets worthy of the French Court, with an infectious ardour! A mysterious Neapolitan who arrived in Paris around 1702 as Music Master to Philippe d’Orléans, Guido was close to the financier Crozat, who in 1716 commissioned Watteau to produce four paintings on the theme of the Seasons: he set them to music around 1717 with his Scherzi armonici sopra le Quattro Stagioni dell’anno.