Les Tuches Quatre

Les Illuminations was premiered by Sophie Wyss in 1939, but, as with much of Britten's work, has been colonised since by tenors. Here, it is a joy to hear Felicity Lott singing a soprano version. Her voice is in the full bloom of youth, and she sings with a thrilling freshness and verve, entirely in keeping with the mood of excitement. There are many delicious moments – how wittily she confides "Des drôles trés solides" in Parade, and explodes with an ecstatic "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage !" echoing the sole phrase in the opening fanfare, but with a completely different tone. When the same phrase appears again, in Interlude, she sings it in yet another way, echoing the instrumental colouring around it.

In 1994, Messe un jour ordinary intersected the vehement and shattering words of the mass with those, individual and derisory, of Laurence, a young drug addict who appeared in a documentary by Jean-Michel Carré. The meeting with the Métaboles choir and the Multilateral Ensemble, both conducted by Léo Warynski, persuaded its composer, Bernard Cavanna, to rewrite this iconoclastic mass to reinforce the presence of the voice and the choir.

Les éléments invite you to a winter evening, a musical journey from the Middle Ages to the present day where songs and poems celebrate winter, its festivals and its coldness, in the intimacy of the a cappella choir. The great composers of the repertoire rub shoulders with new compositions, arrangements of traditional Christmas songs from the provinces of France specially commissioned for this programme. Best enjoyed by the fireside!

This is a mixed bag, but it is a mixture of wonderful stuff put together with considerable expertise. Marc-Antoine Charpentier was a major composer of the French Baroque, served at the Sainte-Chappelle in Paris, and wrote much music of solemnity and grandeur, but was also principal composer for the Comedie Française where he wrote music of a lighter nature. What we get here is mainly the latter, more directly entertaining Charpentier, and we get it in the forms of airs serieux, which are refined songs intended for court circles, and airs a boire, in a more popular style.

Written at the request of Louis XIV in honor of his sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, Lully's Le Ballet royal de la naissance de Vénus was performed in 1665 with Henrietta herself as the goddess of love and youth. This grandiose spectacle combining dancing, music and poetry, served the power of the king, while attesting to the magnificence of his court. Musically very inventive, it shows the culmination of the ballet genre. The recording, from Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques is completed by excerpts from Les Amours déguisés, Psyché, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and Le Carnaval.