Plk Les Comptes

After Les Danaïdes and Les Horaces, Les Talens Lyriques concludes the group’s cycle of Antonio Salieri’s French operas with the world premiere recording of Tarare. Often unfairly overshadowed by his brilliant contemporary Mozart, Salieri here composed a genuine masterpiece on the only libretto ever written by Beaumarchais.

Offenbach’s La Périchole (1868) will never cease to delights music lovers of all persuasions. Marc Minkowski – long one of the composer’s prophets – was keen to pay tribute to him with this world premiere recording on period instruments, in the company of the young school of French singers, including the bewitching Aude Extrémo, the dashing Stanislas de Barbeyrac and the hilarious Alexandre Duhamel. Combining fashionable rhythms with the most unexpected touches of folklore, the score is a veritable flood of hit numbers. How can one not be swept away by the insolence of the Seguidilla, the frenzy of the Bolero or the furious rhythm of the Prison Trio? Never before, perhaps, had Offenbach gone so far in caricaturing political leaders – nor used drunkenness to resolve the imbroglio of inextricable sentimental relationships. And indeed, the ‘Tipsy Arietta’ is one of the composer's best-known numbers. Cheers!

Among French baroque music, chamber music is relatively unknown. And yet, the works constituting the repertoire are often as well-written as those by Vivaldi or Bach, and they are not always more difficult to understand. One of the best-known composer of the genre is François Couperin, brilliant harpsichordist who used to be a musician at the French court. His Nations are one of his non-religious masterpieces.

Jean-Philippe Rameau's opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes premiered in Paris in 1735 but was not a critical success, so the composer prepared a revised version that included an additional act. The five suites the composer extracted are derived from the prologue and four acts, and the brief movements include orchestral arrangements of vocal numbers as well as instrumental pieces. The work displays Rameau's flair for creating evocative and compelling music for the wide variety of the opéra-ballet's dramatic situations, as well as his ear for imaginative orchestration. Familiarity with the plot is not required for appreciating the charms of these colorful miniatures.

Paris, early Twentieth Century: in the space of three ballets, a previously unknown Russian composer revolutionised the music of his time. With The Firebird and Petrushka, respectively fairytale and folktale, and of course The Rite of Spring, a telluric invocation with its insanely innovative harmonies and rhythms, Stravinsky dynamised the Late Romantic orchestra, taking it to literally unheard-of places.