Christophe Rousset

Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset – François Couperin: Concerts Royaux (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:10 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Couperin’s four Concerts royaux were published in 1722 as in a supplement to his third anthology of harpsichord pieces. They sound like a twilight tribute to Sun King’s reign. The score doesn’t mention any instrument but we know the musician envisaged them as ensemble pieces for a mixed consort of instruments. And that was how they were performed at the Sunday concerts at Versailles organized by Mme de Maintenon for Louis XIV between 1714 and 1715.

Chamber music concerts were in fashion at the time so the four Suites were to be played by a bass instrument and several dessus, and not only by the solo harpsichord.Christophe Rousset and his soloists recorded with sense and sensibility this concentrate of French elegance and virtuosity!

With Violinist Stéphanie-Marie Degand, Flutist Georges Barthel, Oboist Patrick Beaugiraud and Violist Atsushi Sakaï, the 18th-century-music lover and baroque conductor features a majestic version of these well-named royal Concerts!

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Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset – Couperin: Les Nations (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:48:56 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

The four Nations by François Couperin (also known as “Couperin the Great”) consist of France, Spain, the Empire and Piedmont (Italy, therefore), though it would be rather futile to look for any truly national characteristics in each of the movements of these four suites. And all the more so due to the fact that many of the pieces had already been composed well before the collection’s publication in 1726, and they were simply renamed… Yes, throughout the thirty-six movements of the work we do hear the French style on the one hand and the more Italianising style on the other, but the many interpolations make it, in fact, a kind of mixed European collection. At most, Spain is entitled to a few rare and truly Iberian turns of phrase, even though they are only visible under a microscope. Christophe Rousset and his musical ensemble Les Talens Lyriques approach these “trios” with joy and respect, knowing that the term “trio” does not necessarily imply three musicians; in fact, the melodic parts are entrusted to two oboes, two flutes and two violins, both together and alternately, while the continuo is played by the bassoon, harpsichord, gamba and theorbo, again either together or in various combinations depending on the musical texture. In this way, the thirty-six movements demonstrate the immense musical richness of these various nations, with all the diversity and contrasts that Couperin has assigned to them.

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Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset – Antonio Salieri: Tarare (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:44:42 minutes | 2,81 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

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.

Salieri has a taste for exoticism and, like Mozart in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, he transports us into a fantasy Orient seen through the eyes of the pre-revolutionary philosophy of the Enlightenment.

The indefatigable Christophe Rousset, unswerving in his efforts to revive scores that are rarely performed or have mysteriously languished in the shadows, directs a five- star cast: the Captain of the Guard Tarare (Cyrille Dubois) enters the palace of the Sultan Atar (Jean-Sébastien Bou) in order to rescue his beloved, the slave Astasie (Karine Deshayes). Behind the love triangle, one senses Beaumarchais’s indictment

of authority in his depiction (in 1787!) of the people’s revolt against the Sultan’s tyrannical power – so much so that it is astonishing that the plot escaped the royal censor’s net.

The music follows the story’s misunderstandings, plot twists and spectacular scenes to produce an opera that prefigures Romanticism, exhilaratingly performed by Les Talens Lyriques and Les Chantres of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. A release that should restore Salieri’s prestige once and for all.

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Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset – Antonio Salieri : Les Horaces (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:25:39 minutes | 1,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Christophe Rousset and his Talens Lyriques release the first world recording of Antonio Salieri’s Les Horaces, which they recreated at Versailles in 2016!

To bring this score to life again, Christophe Rousset gathers a dream vocal cast: tenor Cyrille Dubois, Judith van Wanroij, Julien Dran or Jean-Sebastien Bou embody the fate of the characters inspired by the fratricidal struggle of Horatius and Curiatius in Ancient Rome, dramatically revived by an already romantic Salieri in his musical boldness.

Fights, vows and great crowd scenes, the tears heroine Camilla, the Curiatius’ dilemma, or the implacable determination of old Horatius offer intense and original drama.

A rarity and an absolute discovery!

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Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques – Psyché (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:24:24 minutes | 2,74 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles

Vénus, irritée par la jeune mortelle Psyché dont la beauté irradie le monde, envoie l’Amour pour lui imposer mille épreuves, que la jeune victime surmonte jusqu’à devenir immortelle. Dans cette fable mythologique qui est sa sixième tragédie lyrique (1678), Lully déploie son immense talent, et se venge de Molière pour lequel il avait écrit en 1671 la musique d’une Psyché monumentale, qui causa leur rupture. Fin connaisseur de Lully, Christophe Rousset dirige une distribution somptueuse qui donne à sa Psyché tout le lustre des grands opéras français !

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Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques – Rameau: Pygmalion & Les Fêtes de Polymnie (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:04 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Christophe Rousset and the Talens Lyriques bring us to the stage of the Royal Academy of Music where Pygmalion, an act of ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau inspired by an episode of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was created in 1748. Love, showing empathy for Pygmalion’s despair of loving a statue, invigorates the sculpted woman who immediately falls in love with her creator. Very suggestive, the music of this tender and mischievous ballet deploys the grace of 18th century dances. Like Ovid’s Love, Christophe Rousset instils life in this score, one of Rameau’s greatest successes in his day, and offers us, thanks to his sense of drama and his impeccable leadership, a new and essential reading of this ballet.

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Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques – Lully: Alceste (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:30:55 minutes | 2,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Everyone thinks that they know Alceste by Lully, and yet this 1674 masterpiece has almost never been recorded in its entirety. Apart from the Malgoire version from 1975 with Bruce Brewer and Felicity Palmer, which is starting to become outdated, the real treat is a second versoin by the same Malgoire twenty years later with Jean-Philippe Lafont and Colette Alliot-Lugaz… And so we can only take our hats off to the new discographical opus from Christophe Rousset’s Talens Lyriques, a lively and elegant reading which allows us to rediscover everything that was so innovative about this brilliant, effervescent Florentine, who would become a typical Versaillais, a courtesan and a wheeler-dealer. King Louis XIV – 36 years old, still with all his own teeth and a victorious war leader – could only feel flattered by the piece signed by Quinault: Alcide, who covets the beautiful Alceste (who has been promised to Admetus), is none other than Hercules himself – Louis XIV seeing himself in Hercules saving the beautiful Madame de Montespan from the clutches of her husband.

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Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques – Rameau: Zaïs (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:36:54 minutes | 2,93 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

In 1745, the King of France granted Jean-Philippe Rameau the title of ‘Composer to the Court’, coupled with a healthy pension. This new period produced pieces of a much lighter character, with Rameau working alongside the librettist Louis de Cahusac, and the resulting collaborations are now counted amongst the Burgundian musician’s greatest masterpieces. Zaïs was presented on the stage of the Royal Academy of Music in 1748. This heroic ballet offers French music some of its most beautiful movements, both vocally and instrumentally. The entire work is a meditation on its famous opening chaos, and succeeds, surprisingly, through its theatrical stamp and in the audacity of the writing. The plot is, perhaps, tenuous – a lover (Zaïs) is in the throes of affection for his beloved (Zélidie), determining to cherish her – which serves as the pretext for endless entertainment, dancing, and the work’s magical character. Today, it remains surprising that a work as sumptuous as Rameau’s Zaïs is neglected in favour of the Indes Galantes or Hippolyte et Aricie. It is paradoxical, then, that in 1970 Gustav would combine the small amount of French music he truly appreciated with a reassessment of the beauties of this work. Gustav created a fascinating recording with La Petite Bande Sigiswald Kuijken (STIL), which has now become a true rarity, despite its questionable vocalists. Happily for us, Christophe Rousset, who cherishes Rameaus’s older work, has dedicated himself to it, and offers us this gorgeously captured rendition, with French singers working under the direction of his sharp and witty leadership. The opening of the Les Talens Lyriques recital is far more vivid than anything that has been achieved in over twenty years for L’Oiseau-Lyre, in which theOuverture immediately sets the tone. Rousset completely captures the brilliance of the score, and his imagination – which here seems insatiable – liberates his singers, who are boundlessly invested in this work; complicit in a musical resurrection. An enchantment of sorts? No. A whirlwind, rather.

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