Jul Ils M’ont Fait Mal

"Percé jusques au fond du coeur" ("Pierced to my heart's depths") is a tragic proclamation of Le Cid's voice, at last put to music by "Mr Charpentier, famed for a thousand works that charmed all of France". This collection of courtly arias, serious songs and drinking songs, played both at the Court of Louis XV and in the inner circles of the French bourgeoisie, is a marvellous maze on the Map of Tendre developed by Charpentier, a poet-musician whose sophistication vies with an irresistible sense of theatricality! Under the direction of Stéphane Fuget, the cream of French vocalists restores the original aura of these gems, with glittering ornamentation.

Most of the innumerable Françoise Hardy compilations focus on just one phase of her career (most often, though not always, the early to mid-'60s). En Resume is an unusual exception to the trend, in that its 21 tracks do indeed cover the first three decades of her discography, from her debut 1962 hit, "Tous les Garcons et les Filles," to 1995's "Revenge of the Flowers" (which she co-wrote with Malcolm McLaren and others).

In Jepht by Michel Pignolet de Montclair, Gyrgy Vashegyi directs with style and energy another riveting account of a neglected French Baroque opera. The work, based on the Biblical tale of a conquering general obliged, by a sacred vow, to sacrifice his own kin, became an immediate success in 1732, indeed a fixture in opera life in France, receiving over a hundred performances at the Opra alone in the three decades following its premire. Montclair and his librettist Pellegrin were open to preparing revised versions of the opera and it is the third and conclusive edition which has been worked on by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles and recorded by Vashegyi and his musicians.

C'est avec ce CD que j'ai découvert l'ensemble "Le Poème Harmonique" -déjà prometteur par le nom- et son chef, Vincent Demestre. Nul doute que c'est le premier d'une longue série. A l'écoute de ce CD, je ne peux que m'associer aux critiques qui ont fait la louange de ce talent qu'est Vincent Demestre. Merci à lui et à ses musiciens de nous faire redécouvrir notre patrimoine hélàs oublié. Les chansons qui constituent "Plaisir d'Amour" sont splendides et interprétées divinement.