Marie Flore je Pars

The Band was born in 1972, on the initiative of Jean-Marie Renard, guitarist from the beginning and manager of the Band today, in the wake of a basic musical current launched by Alan Stivell. He brings together five musicians friends of different musical cultures (traditional, jazz, folk, rock'n'roll) around a common passion, the Celtic music, to form the band Gwendal. At that time in France many bands inspired by the Breton and Irish traditional music appeared. Gwendal distinguished itself from the very start by the choice of what will make the continuity of its style during its entire career: a sound mixing melodies of traditional influence, with arrangements and rhythmic strongly influenced by modern musical currents of various times: jazz, rock'n'roll…

Leclair's single opera Scylla et Glaucus may lack the sheer audacity of his teacher Rameau, but it's enormously likeable…the performers respond…stylishly to Leclair's charming if slightly predictable sound-world…and the conducting preserves a neat balance between drama and ornament…It is clear that Gardiner favours intervention over chilly authenticity; whether or not you agree with all his decisions, the clarity of the image he presents is often provocative and always bracing.

Returning to the Montpellier Codex for this programme of motets and chansons from 13th-century France, Anonymous 4 explores two dominant themes of the period: love and longing for the earthly/earthy Marion and the heavenly/virginal Marie. The Montpellier Codex, from which Anonymous 4 draw all these motets, was collected in Paris around the year 1300 and is the richest single source of 13th-century French polyphony. With a repertory spanning the entire 13th century, it contains polyphonic works in all the major forms of its era: organum, conductus, hocket and, primarily, motet (315 motets in all).

There is more Spain in Offenbach’s brain than in Spain itself’, said a journalist entranced by Maître Péronilla. Understandably so, given the charm and humour of this operetta in which no fewer than twenty-two characters are kept busy unravelling a preposterously complicated love story. And the libretto is all the better for having been penned by the composer himself.

Le titre de cet album “Je vous salis ma rue” est la contrepèterie de “Je vous salue Marie”, Marie pouvant être très probablement une allusion à la Marie-Jeanne. Cette contrepèterie est connue pour être un poème de Jacques Prévert, extrait de Fatras, son dernier recueil, paru en 1966.

Jean-Marie Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus (Tragédie en un prologue et cinq actes, Paris, 1746) provides an excellent opportunity for György Vashegyi, a luxury cast and music scholars at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles to revisit the French Baroque operatic canon and emerge with a fresh new take on this established work, the violin virtuoso and composer's single offering for the Paris Opéra.