Ricercar Consort

Ricercar Consort & Philippe Pierlot – Da Pacem (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:06 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Da pacem gathers music by Heinrich Schütz that expressed the prayers of his listeners during the troubling times of the Thirty Years’ War, a period when the people of Central Europe “in such great fear and danger of war, sang with each other such useful and comforting songs”. Whether in elaborate concertos or simple motets, his music conveyed people’s hopes for a fair and lasting peace that can still resonate in our ears today.

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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:42 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Composed by Dietrich Buxtehude in 1680 for the church of Lübeck, where he had been working for ten years, Membra Jesu Nostri describes the scars of the Passion of Christ through a cycle of seven cantatas. The work owes its title to a Latin manuscript written by a relative of Saint Bernard. Typical of the pietism of 17th century Lutheran Germany, the piece is a descent into the darkness of suffering and an ode to the promise of consolation. Grounded in rhetoric, Buxtehude’s music influenced a generation of innovative musicians. It would later be an inspiration to Johann Sebastian Bach, who traveled to Lübeck specifically to meet Buxtehude. Membra Jesus Nostri was written for a five-voice ensemble. It requires a set of soloists with three lower voices and two upper parts, as well as a subtle instrumental accompaniment featuring two violins, five viols, and one basso continuo chose by the musicians. Some authors have seen the influence of the “Versailles Motet,” which Buxtehude knew well, in this setup. The influence of Italian music, especially Monteverdi, which he may have known through his interest in Schütz’s music, is also clear. The work is the testimony to Buxtehude’s incredibly expressive power and deserves to be considered as a masterpiece among other spiritual compositions such as Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien, Bach’s Passions and, on an instrumental level, Biber’s Sonates du Rosaire. According to Philippe Pierlot, who can be heard on the record, “Buxtehude is appealing directly to our senses and making us experience the suffering of Christ. We can feel the wounds, the blows, and the heart when it ceases to beat. Thanks to the genius of his music, the composer not only moves his listener to intense emotion, but also enlightens him, giving him access to the deep meaning of the text it sings”  – François Hudry

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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – J.S. Bach: Consolatio (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:14 minutes | 1,26 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

The cantata Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe (Jesus gathered the twelve to Himself) BWV 22, holds a historic place in Bach’s work. Indeed he composed it while still in Köthen, as an audition piece for the position of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, and then conducted it on February 7th, 1723, maybe even singing the bass part himself. Famously the city council, unable to convince its preferred composers – Telemann, Graupner and two others –, decided to settle with “mediocre” Bach… The gospel of the day first announces his death and his resurrection by Christ and his disciplines. A modest orchestra: voices, strings, one oboe and continuo, but the musical content is – like in almost all of Bach’s cantatas – amongst the best he’s ever written.

For the same celebration, Bach composed a new cantata the following year, Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott (Lord Jesus Christ, true Man and God) BWV 127. But it has almost nothing in common with the previous piece: here Bach offers a very impressive reflection on physical death. Throughout his cantatas he called for a blessed death to free himself from the vicissitudes of life on Earth, but this now reveals how much he may have feared physical death itself. The aria ”Die Seele ruht”is one of these sublime moments suspended in time, an ineffable tintinnabulum, in which the soprano and the oboe dialogue on a harrowing theme while the flutes and string pizzicatos symbolise the passing of time with incredible beauty.

Finally it’s with Die Elenden sollen essen (The miserable shall eat) BWV 75 that Bach started off his work in Leipzig, in St. Nicholas Church this time, as the cantatas were alternately performed in both churches. Probably because he wanted to start with a bang, he designed this cantata on a huge scale: fourteen numbers, divided in two parts. Of course Bach would have never been able to produce such vast and powerful partitions on a weekly basis, but there is a real substance to this Passion… and it’s with great passion that Philippe Pierlot, his Ricercar Consort and the soloists perform these masterpieces.

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Ricercar Consort & Philippe Pierlot – Buxtehude: Salvator Mundi (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:26 minutes | 1,40 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Four years after the superb ‘Membra Jesu nostri’, the Ricercar Consort once again turns to Buxtehude.The majority of the cantatas in this recording are centred on Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. With the both dramatic and comforting sounds of his cantatas, Buxtehude succeeded in shifting the focus from human suffering to divine help, thus giving people a foretaste of heavenly harmony and perfection.

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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – Bach : Passio secundum Johannem (St. John Passion) (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:53:31 minutes | 1,78 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Mirare

« Il y a dans cette Passion, des moments d’une beauté déchirante, admirablement interprétés, admirablement joués. Dès le début, le choral d’ouverture « Herr, unser Herrscher » possède une cadence de battement de 150 – c’est quelque chose, suite à quoi le sportif a besoin d’endurance. Saisissante, immédiate et sans concession, cette interprétation est admirablement menée par un excellent Evangéliste. Philippe Pierlot démontre qu’il a la main heureuse lorsqu’il choisit les solistes, les tempi et du génie dans la dramaturgie. Pour résumer : ce disque est la meilleure interprétation de la Passion selon saint Jean du moment ! »

Robert Strobl

La Passion selon Saint-Jean, chef d’ceuvre universel de l’histoire musicale occidentale, créée en 1724 (1ère version) à Leipzig, a été de nombreuses fois enregistrée et c’est toujours, aujourd’hui une entreprise considérable (et admirable !) que de désirer la jouer en concert, ou la graver au disque. Philippe Pierlot et le Ricercar Consort s’attaquent à leur tour au monument de Jean-Sébastien Bach. Ils livrent une belle version qui réussit à trouver un point d’équilibre entre une nécessaire dramatisation du livret et une forme d’intimité inhérente à la méditation. Les solistes sont au rendez-vous dans les airs et les récitatifs, les affects baroques qui suivent le cycle traditionnel des stations, de l’arrestation de Jésus à sa mise au tombeau.
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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – J.S. Bach – Magnificat (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:52 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Mirare

Philippe Pierlot and the Ricercar Consort’s 2006 recording of Bach’s Magnificat brings back the glory days of historically informed performances, those halcyon days in the 1980s when musicians, empowered by scholarship and energized by virtuosity, were recording the Baroque repertoire with the zeal of the newly converted. Though Pierlot and his musicians are of a younger generation, they bring a missionary fervor to the music, a program of Bach’s Magnificat, BWV 243, and Missa Brevis, BWV 235, interspersed with two well-chosen organ works, the Fuga sopra il Magnificat, BWV 733, and the Präludium und Fuga, BWV 541. Pierlot’s textures are clean, his rhythms buoyant, his colors bright, and tempos brisk, but not rushed in the fast movements, and contemplative but not moribund in the slow movements. The Ricercar Consort plays with technical brilliance and manifest enthusiasm as an ensemble, and the violin and flute soloists deliver sparkling performances. But perhaps the best thing is the five vocal soloists and given that they also serve as the choir, their performances are even more remarkable. With clarion tones, gracious technique, and an effortless blend, they comport themselves with the ease and luster of the best jazz vocal groups, and the spirit they bring to their parts is infectious. Francis Jacob delivers forceful yet effervescent readings of the two organ works. Mirare’s digital sound is as clear and as real as a blue sky.
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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – J.S. Bach: In tempore Nativitatis – Christmas Cantatas BWV 110, 151, 63 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:07:53 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Mirare

As every year, the Lutherans celebrate Christmas with splendor as well as the two days that follow. After the “Magnificat” composed for these same circumstances, the Ricercar Consort presents three festive works by JS Bach. The whole work is an admirable achievement, right from the mosaic of highly contrasted vocal and instrumental episodes that structures the opening chorus, in which three groups are combined or set against each other: the trumpets and drums, the three oboes, and the strings, always with the support of the continuo. The first duetto sounds like a duet from a Passion, while the second, in complementary fashion, brings the comfort that will culminate in the exultation of the final chorus.
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Ricercar Consort, Philippe Pierlot – François Couperin: Apothéoses (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:06:45 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Mirare

Philippe Pierlot and his superb Ricercar Consort present tributes to both Corelli and Lully with the two Apothéoses by François Couperin, written in the memory of Arcangelo Corelli and Jean-Baptiste Lully respectively. Behind them is an aesthetic programme: they are a plea for the mixture of the Italian and the French style, the so-called goûts réunis. The ensemble consists of Marc Hantaï and Georges Barthel (transverse flutes), François Fernandez and Sophie Gent (violins), Philippe Pierlot (viola da gamba), Eduardo Egüez (theorbo and guitar) and François Guerrier (harpsichord). Both pieces are given lively and expressive interpretations: Couperin’s Apothéoses are in the tradition of the tombeau, and therefore the Tombeau de Monsieur de Lully by Jean-Féry Rebel fits well into the programme and is performed in between the two pieces by Couperin.

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