La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot – London circa 1740: Handel’s musicians (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/192kHz]

La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot – London circa 1740: Handel’s musicians (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:08:57 minutes | 2,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

For this new instalment of their series devoted to British music of the eighteenth century, the musicians of La Rêveuse take us to London in the 1740s. The leading Italian and German virtuosos Handel invited to play in his orchestra brought a powerful wind of change to English musical life, while the Scot James Oswald achieved the tour de force of making the music of his country fashionable in the drawing rooms of London.

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La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot & Florence Bolton – London circa 1720: Corelli’s Legacy (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot & Florence Bolton – London circa 1720: Corelli’s Legacy (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:08 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Who could have imagined that London would become the capital of Italian opera in the early eighteenth century? The 1720s witnessed a feverish demand for music that led many foreign virtuosos to move to the city. Concert-loving Londoners relished the last sonatas in the style of the old master Corelli, the first recorder and flute concertos, and the works of the youthful newcomer Handel… Let us admire this lively scene with the musicians of La Rêveuse, in their first recording for harmonia mundi!

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La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Purcell: Devotional Songs & Anthems (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Purcell: Devotional Songs & Anthems (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:09:56 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Purcell’s devotional songs for three male voices are still little known and shrouded in a certain mystery. Yet these meditations on the frailty of human existence are among his finest and most moving works. Gifted with profound intuition of the emotions that can emerge from the union of text and music, this formidable composer, who understood and served the vocal music of his time so well, continues here the work begun by the masters of the preceding generation such as Henry Lawes.

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La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Marin Marais: Pièces de viole (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton – Marin Marais: Pièces de viole (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:29 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Marin Marais, “chamber viola player to the King”, and a talented composer is the author of this rich work full of contrasts, which forms the bridge, in the French viola tradition, between the generation of pioneers (with Saint-Colombe at their head) and the generation of the last French viola players (such as Forqueray or Caix d’Hervelois). This selection gives us an insight into the art of Marais – who was recognised in his own time as a technically gifted and brilliant musician – by way of his two Livres de viole, published in 1717 and 1725 respectively. It was in this period, which was both especially artistically fruitful but also unstable and subject to all sorts of political, economic and social turmoil, that Marais brought out his two last works. This album brings together a good number of strikingly original pieces, in particular from the Suite d’un goût étranger, a real introduction to the world of tonalities. The viola responds very differently to different tones: each tonality has its own very particular effect in terms of musical rhetoric: the Paraza in D minor sounds opulent and full, the Badinage in F sharp minor fragile and uncertain. Special mention should also go to a rare and stunning piece called Le Tact, which requires a curious sort of left-handed pizzicato without any help from the right (which he calls “tact”, a forerunner of very modern techniques). This is where Marais shows his particular genius, because he loves the instrument’s sensitive, vulnerable instrument, which he explores with great poetry. Founded by theorbist Benjamin Perrot and the viola player Florence Bolton, La Rêveuse (taking its name from the final piece of this album) is an ensemble which specialises in the artistic heritage of the 17th and 18th Centuries, periods which are rich in experiences and artistic inventions of all kinds.

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La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot & Florence Bolton – Circa 1700: Purcell & his Generation (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot & Florence Bolton – Circa 1700: Purcell & his Generation (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:14 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

At the end of the Seventeenth Century, London became a city full of promise, the stuff that dreams were made of: theatres and concerts were packed every night and the music publishing market was flourishing.
This great European capital at the height of its economic expansion was extremely attractive to the foreign musicians who settled there in large numbers. It provided a most favourable context for the development of instrumental music, fuelled by the final flowering of the English tradition and by the latest European innovations.

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La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton & Maïlys de Villoutreys – Buxtehude: Cantates pour voix seule – Manuscrits d’Uppsala (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton & Maïlys de Villoutreys – Buxtehude: Cantates pour voix seule – Manuscrits d’Uppsala (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:22 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

In the Seventeenth Century, Buxtehude and his contemporaries composed an innovative sacred repertory for solo voice, nurtured by Italian cantatas, rhetoric and drama, which brought renown to the Hanseatic cities of north Germany and inspired the young Bach.

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La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot – Le Concert des Oiseaux. Vincent Bouchot: Le Carnaval des animaux en péril (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton, Benjamin Perrot – Le Concert des Oiseaux. Vincent Bouchot: Le Carnaval des animaux en péril (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:01 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

This dazzling program is a tribute to wildlife – and a journey through the centuries: Works from earlier times, from Couperin to Ravel, inspired by the songs of birds, are mirrored in an offbeat Carnaval des animaux en péril. Its composer Vincent Bouchot raises awareness for animal species that are threatened with extinction – but also for musical instruments that almost disappeared.

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Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton, La Rêveuse – Brossard: Oratorios & Leandro (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton, La Rêveuse - Brossard: Oratorios & Leandro (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Benjamin Perrot, Florence Bolton, La Rêveuse – Brossard: Oratorios & Leandro (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:21 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Mirare Area: France

Sébastien de Brossard, an enthusiastic collector of music, pedagogue and author of the first dictionary of music, was also a very talented composer. This champion of Italian music and great connoisseur of the music of Carissimi probably took the Roman master as the model for his two oratorios. Leandro, a dramatic work in Italian, is a miniature masterpiece and one of the earliest cantatas by a French composer.
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