Montréal Baroque

French Baroque composer Marin Marais is primarily known for his inward-looking viol music, but he also worked as a "measure beater" at the Académie royale de musique, the institution that evolved into the Paris Opéra, and he wrote vocal music of various kinds, as well. This disc presents instrumental excerpts from Marais' 1709 opera Sémélé. These excerpts are dances, marches, and slightly longer orchestra passages "symphonies," "préludes," an overture, and "entreés" for groups of personages that appear on-stage in the opera.

This disc is the debut entry in a full cycle of Bach's cantatas to come from Canada's Montreal Baroque historical performance ensemble. Conductor Eric Milnes opts for the controversial approach of having just one voice per part – the four soloists, joined together – in the choral movements, with no choir in sight.

Even by Bach’s standards, they are exceptional. All three of them were conceived as grateful celebrations of the ancient feastday of the Archangel Michael . St Michael’s day commemorates the apocalyptic combat and eventual victory of Michael and the angels of Heaven against the armies of Satan. All three of these cantatas are set for a festive orchestra with strings plus three trumpets, drums, and other luxuries (an extra third hautboy, a traverso in Cantata 130, and hautboys doubling on hautbois d’amour or playing oboe da caccia in Cantata 19).

One of the most popular of the Nativity cantatas is certainly No. 122, performed the Sunday after Christmas, “The new-born baby,” with its motet-like opening chorus and flavored orchestral ritornellos that underline its pastoral nature. The recitative with three recorders playing the choir of angels is one of the most unusual and touching moments in all of Bach. No. 61, “Now come, Savior of the heathens” is an early Weimar cantata, dating from 1714, where the opening chorale is placed in the context of a French overture, its processional feeling perfectly suited to the first Sunday of Advent. Bach even submitted this work as an examination piece for the post of Cantor at the Thomas School; it was rejected as too theatrical.

The recording is entirely devoted to French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel and comprises some of his most admirable ballet music, along with the enigmatic suite Les Elemens.
The orchestra was awarded two Opus Prizes in January 2007 (voted by the Conseil québécois de la musique) for this program, which was featured in Arion’s 2006 activities. One Prize was for the ‘Concert of the Year in Montreal’ and the other for the ‘Concert of the Year, Music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque eras’.

The anglophone listener may be deceived by both parts of the "Concertos pour flûte" title of this program of little-known Alessandro Scarlatti chamber music: the music is not for flute (or at least is not played by one), and there aren't any concertos. The recorder was and is known in French as a flûte a bec, whereas the transverse flute would have been known to Scarlatti's associates simply as a traverso.

The music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier has a moderate range and a deceptively simple harmonic framework that lead a wide variety of performing forces to attempt his works. The little Messe de minuit was a Christmastime favorite even in the years when French Baroque music was almost unknown otherwise. But choirs can get in over their heads, and that happens here even to Le Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, a group that has released fine recordings of music by Carissimi and other Baroque composers.

One might be forgiven for thinking Beatles Baroque III by Les Boréades would actually sound Baroque, as it and two previous volumes are billed, but such is not the case. Even though this Canadian early music ensemble has impressive credentials, and plays the repertoire from Frescobaldi to C.P.E. Bach with aplomb, its performances on this disc are overwhelmingly modern in feeling and not too far removed from the actual music produced by the Beatles and George Martin in the 1960s.

Le Nouvel Opéra and Les Boréades de Montréal have assembled an exceptional group of artists for the first-ever recording of Nicandro e Fileno, a pastoral opera by Paolo Lorenzani (1640-1713) first performed in 1681 before Louis XIV at the palace of Fontainebleau.
The manuscript is conserved in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Canadian musicologist Albert La France prepared the critical edition of Nicandro e Fileno for the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. Thanks to the initiative of Suzie LeBlanc and Francis Colpron, this opera was restored to life for this recording and for the 2017 performance in Montreal, with stage direction by Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière.

This collection puts some of the best Purcell on display–and it couldn't have a more musical or vocally accomplished advocate than Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. Her voice is pretty for sure, but it also has richness and substance, not to mention a most endearing vibrato that adds an earnestness and enlivening tension to everything she sings.