Isabelle Olivier

Paris certainly held great attraction for German composers of the late 18th century. One of them was Henri-Joseph Rigel, born as Riegel in Wertheim in Germany. Rigel was already active as a composer of orchestral music while still in Germany, where he studied with Niccolò Jommelli in Stuttgart. It is not exactly known when he went to Paris, but in 1768 he established his own residence in the French capital. In that same year he married, and in 1769 and 1772 his two sons were born.

For all the celebrations to mark the tercentenary of Purcell’s death last year (1995), his keyboard music has remained very much in the shadow of his works for the theatre and Church; yet the simplicity and grace of these more intimate pieces make them immediately appealing. Several of them are, in fact, transcriptions of earlier vocal works, and therein lies the key to their interpretation. Of the two performers, Olivier Baumont is the more flamboyant, invariably choosing faster tempi than Sophie Yates, and playing with fluidity, panache and humour. But Yates’s guileless approach really captures the music’s ingenuousness, even if she occasionally sounds a little too strait-laced. Her harpsichord (a copy by Andrew Garlich of an instrument made in 1681 by Jean-Antoine Vaudry, now in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum) could hardly be better suited to the music, with its sweet, warm sound, beautifully reproduced by the Chandos engineers, who don’t make the all too frequent mistake of recording the instrument too close. Baumont’s harpsichord has a sharper tang, and he also uses a virginals for the Grounds and individual lessons. Both artists have much to offer, and the final choice will depend on whether you prefer your Purcell plain (Yates) or piquant (Baumont).

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops.
In the labyrinth of sentiments, the magic wand of the sorcerer Isménor confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. Dances, choruses and arias merge in a subtle, poetic mixture, magnified by the dialogues sung in the grand tradition of French prosody and the tragédie lyrique. With Tancrède, André Campra established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.

Following on from and designed along the same lines as the Guide to Period Instruments, this boxed set includes an exhaustive introductory text as well as a great quantity of music excerpts on the set’s eight CDs. These extracts have been taken from the extensive repertoire recorded by Ricercar over many years, with excerpts from recordings kindly provided by our colleagues from Harmonia Mundi, Gimell, Accent, Alpha and Sony supplementing our programme where necessary. The Lutheran repertoire of the Renaissance has remained for all intents and purposes unrecorded up until now; the tracks illustrating this repertoire together with other excerpts have been recorded specially for this compilation by Vox Luminis.

Cet ouvrage vise à contribuer à la réflexion sur les enjeux que représentent pour la discipline historique la manière d’envisager les rapports entre les projets d’autodétermination québécois et autochtones. Les projets politiques de la nation québécoise et des peuples autochtones sont en effet imbriqués dans des rapports de pouvoir historiquement marqués par le colonialisme et la non-reconnaissance. …