Suite Française

Celibidache was without question one of the most important and original conductors in recent memory. He was a perfectionist who disliked what he perceived to be the synthetic sounds created in the modern recording studio, preferring the immediacy of the concert platform and the interaction with a live audience.

The highly reputed Mouret lit up the Duchess of Maine's festivities with his Divertissements en Musique before becoming the official composer of the Comedie-Italienne in 1717, then artistic director of the Concert Spirituel in 1728. The Ensemble la Francaise invites us to discover his music's spontaneity, lightness and grace, as well as its dramatic expressivity, through his Airs a Danser from the Premier Livre (1734) and Concert de Chambre from the Second Livre (1738), along with a selection of motets that he composed for the Concert Spirituel in 1730.

Poulenc the miniaturist par excellence burst into public view, fully-formed in his late teens, emerging flamboyantly into the artistic swirl of 1920s Paris. His fabulously inventive, quirky and colourful approach to writing for chamber ensemble and voice comes vividly to life in this set of early works which capture all of his youthful elegance, wit, and occasionally sardonic humour.