Marie Francois

Olivier Greif was an outstanding composer and pianist who died before his time. His complex, charismatic personality made an impression on every artist who encountered him. A keen duty of remembrance has animated them ever since, now relayed by a young generation who have been captivated by his vibrant, tragic and yet radiant music. Olivier Greif was born in Paris on the 3 rd of January, 1950, to Jewish, Polish émigré parents. (His father, a pianist, and survivor of Auschwitz, became a neuropsychiatrist.) Olivier entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten. At the age of seventeen, he obtained his first prize for composition in Tony Aubin’s class, then going on to hone his skills in New York with Luciano Berio. From the age of eleven until he was thirty-one, he composed highly individualistic works (including Chants de l’Âme in 1979), outside current trends.

Conductor and musicologist Jean-François Paillard was one of the most visible French exponents of Baroque music from the 1960s onward. Paillard earned a degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne, but he turned to music soon after. He attended the Paris Conservatory as a musicology student, where he won first prize in music history; he later studied conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Igor Markevitch. He formed the Ensemble Jean-Marie Leclair in 1952, which was renamed the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra the following year. Comprised of a dozen string players and a harpsichord, the group paralleled such small-scale English ensembles as the Boyd Neel Orchestra in performing Baroque-era works - especially those from France - as well as contemporary works for string orchestra. As the public's interest in Baroque music rose, the orchestra's popularity grew and was aided by a series of international tours covering dozens of countries.

Before you play the first track of this disc, make sure you're in quiet surroundings and ready to listen closely. You'll hear a pure yet sensuous soprano voice slip gently out of the silence and sing a melody that manages to be haunting and virtuosic at the same time–only to be followed by a similar voice doing the same thing. The two voices coil around each other (with some gleaming suspensions) for a full minute before instruments join them. And that's just the beginning of this marvelous disc of motets by François Couperin, a composer better known for his keyboard and chamber music. Most of these pieces were written to accompany the Elevation of the Host (the most solemn moment of the Roman Catholic liturgy), so you won't hear much exuberance.

Ce Concert chez la Reine, par les Ombres un jeune ensemble de musique baroque de la nouvelle génération, en résidence à Ambronay, est saisissant de réalisme dans la reconstitution historique authentique. Dès les premières secondes, j'ai eu l'impression d'être dans une salle éclairée par des bougies, entourée de dames en costumes et de marquis emperruqués Louis XV.

Reine d'Ecosse, Marie Stuart épouse à 17 ans le roi de France François II. A la mort de celui-ci, elle part pour l'Ecosse. Son implication dans le meurtre de son deuxième époux et son mariage avec l'assassin déclenchant des troubles en Ecosse, elle abdique et se réfugie en Angleterre. Elisabeth Ire la fait mettre en prison pendant dix-huit ans puis exécuter.
Nouvelle traduction. …