Les Talens Lyriques

Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques – Atys (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:52:11 minutes | 3,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles

This is Atys, the royal opera, Lully’s masterpiece, which was first performed before the court in 1676. A legendary work in the rediscovery of Grand-Siècle operas, Atys is a prime example of the emerging lyric art: love is at the heart of the plot and the hero dies on stage – for the first time in Lully’s work – evoking a magnificent lament that will bring tears to even the hardest heart. Lully’s incredible music magnifies Philippe Quinault’s gloriously tragic text, creating their first masterpiece together, an Atys adored by the Sun King

Christophe Rousset gives his vision of a work that has fascinated him for three decades, giving it the vivid colors filled with Reinoud Van Mechelen’s portrayal of a wonderful Atys.

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Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset – Pancrace Royer: Surprising Royer, Orchestral Suites (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:05 minutes | 1,50 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aparté

After two recordings devoted to the harpsichord pieces of Savoyard composer Pancrace Royer, Christophe Rousset, this time conducting, turns to the composer’s orchestral suites. Taken from Royer’s operatic works and (with the exception of a live version of Pyrrhus) never previously recorded, these choreographic pieces reveal a new facet of the composer. The brilliance and virtuosity of his harpsichord compositions are well known; here we discover his gift for refinement and lyricism. These dances show Royer’s singular sense of harmony and fine use of orchestral contrasts, as well as an almost whimsical rhetoric of the unexpected. Some of his best-known pieces, including the famous “March of the Scythians” from Zaïde, are to be heard here in their orchestral form. This recording will undoubtedly further the rediscovery of this iconoclastic composer, whose very personal style and innate sense of drama are given striking depth and relief here under the baton of Christophe Rousset.
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Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset – Lully: Acis et Galatée (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:51:16 minutes | 2,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aparté

Composed on 1686 as part of the festivities organised by the Duc de Vendôme in honour of the Grand Dauphin, during the latter’s visit to his estate at the Château d’Anet in September of that year, Acis et Galatée is Lully’s last complete opera. His faithful librettist Quinault having retired from writing for the stage, he collaborated this time with the poet Campistron on a work that tells the story of the love between the sea-nymph Galatea and the shepherd Acis – a love threatened by the violence of the jealous cyclops Polyphemus. This opera, an undoubted dramatic success, gives the orchestra an important part, expressively evoking, for example, the giant’s cries of anger, the terror of the chorus, and the lovers’ hasty flight in Act III. It includes some magnificent pieces, including the final passacaille, as well as inventive treasures, such as duet for hautes-contre (high tenors) “Ah! Je succombe au tourment qui m’accable”, or the burlesque march that accompanies the entry of Polyphemus and his fellow cyclopes, conveying their uncouthness. But the loveliest pieces in the score are for Galatea: “Enfin, j’ai dissipé la crainte”, for instance, or “Que ne puis-je expirer après ce coup funeste?”. Lully died in March 1687, a few months after the première, leaving Achille et Polyxène unfinished.
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Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset – Lully: Acis et Galatée (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:51:16 minutes | 2,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Aparté

Composed on 1686 as part of the festivities organised by the Duc de Vendôme in honour of the Grand Dauphin, during the latter’s visit to his estate at the Château d’Anet in September of that year, Acis et Galatée is Lully’s last complete opera. His faithful librettist Quinault having retired from writing for the stage, he collaborated this time with the poet Campistron on a work that tells the story of the love between the sea-nymph Galatea and the shepherd Acis – a love threatened by the violence of the jealous cyclops Polyphemus. This opera, an undoubted dramatic success, gives the orchestra an important part, expressively evoking, for example, the giant’s cries of anger, the terror of the chorus, and the lovers’ hasty flight in Act III. It includes some magnificent pieces, including the final passacaille, as well as inventive treasures, such as duet for hautes-contre (high tenors) “Ah! Je succombe au tourment qui m’accable”, or the burlesque march that accompanies the entry of Polyphemus and his fellow cyclopes, conveying their uncouthness. But the loveliest pieces in the score are for Galatea: “Enfin, j’ai dissipé la crainte”, for instance, or “Que ne puis-je expirer après ce coup funeste?”. Lully died in March 1687, a few months after the première, leaving Achille et Polyxène unfinished.
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Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset – Lully: Thésée (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:41:45 minutes | 2,82 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

With Thésée, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques continue their tour of Lully’s operas, in which they have become specialists. Lully’s third musical tragedy, and one of the least recorded, Thésée recounts the hero’s youth, long before his battle with the Minotaur or his intrigues with Ariadne and Phèdre. The story takes the listener on a journey through a series of changing settings – from the underworld to the island of paradise, from Versailles to Athens – supported by the incredible vocal eloquence of Lully’s music, underpinned by a constant and hitherto unrivalled tension.

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Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset – Salieri: Armida (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:05:35 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Recorded from 10th to 13th July 2020 at the Philharmonie de Paris, this Armida teaches us a little more about Antonio Salieri, so loved during his lifetime and so maligned later, especially because of his obscure relationship with Mozart that the nineteenth century invented and that Milos Forman’s film has given more life to in our time.

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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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