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Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre – Je meurs sans mourir (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 59:47 minutes | 588 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Boesset, nourished by the ‘air de cour’ tradition of his predecessors such as Pierre Guédron, took this genre to new heights, creating a truly Baroque aesthetic.
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Le Poème Harmonique, Stéphanie dOustrac & Vincent Dumestre – Mon amant de Saint-Jean (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:32 minutes | 1,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Fascinated by the interplay of echoes from one past to another, Vincent Dumestre and Stéphanie d’Oustrac found an affinity in the project Mon Amant de Saint-Jean , their very first collaboration, and aimed to make it a unique musical adventure: a recital in which the atmosphere of the chansons of the Années Folles infuses early music with its sweet madness. In 1904, the great cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert was invited to the home of the Casadesus family, the founders of the Société des Instruments Anciens (Early instrument society): the Baroque fraternised with the café-concert. Around the same time, in the revue Paris qui chante, an aria by Scarlatti rubbed shoulders with the coarse language of Aristide Bruant and Paulin, while Gaston Dumestre, a singer at the cabaret Le Chat Noir (and one of Vincent’s ancestors!), sang chansons réalistes while accompanying himself on the theorbo presented to him by Oscar II of Sweden: ‘It is in language that we must seek the common driving force. These cabaret singers relished a very special flavour, a vigour, a raciness in the words of the Baroque era’, concludes Vincent Dumestre.
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Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre – Sebastián Durón: Coronis (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:39:05 minutes | 1,99 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This recording provides an opportunity to discover a forgotten Baroque operatic treasure, a zarzuela, the key dramatic and musical genre of the Spanish Golden Age. Sumptuous choruses, poignant arias and folksongs blend in a rich and spectacular narrative, whose music was falsely attributed to Antonio Literes before Sebastián Durón (1660-1716) was acknowledged as its composer in 2009! Another peculiarity of the work is that it is sung by seven sopranos, who are even given the roles of Apollo, Neptune and the monster Triton. Only the part of an old man, the seer Proteus, is assigned to a tenor. Ana Quintans in the title role, Isabelle Druet, Anthea Pichanick, Caroline Meng and Cyril Auvity are among the cast of this colourful zarzuela, whose modern stage premiere in 2019 enjoyed great success.
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Le Poème Harmonique, Les Cris de Paris, Vincent Dumestre – Son of England (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:44 minutes | 984 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Henry Purcell died on 21 November 1695 at the age of thirty- six. The music he had written for the funeral of Queen Mary only eight months earlier was performed again for his burial service. Soon afterwards, several composers paid tribute to Purcell by writing odes in his memory. Jeremiah Clarke’s homage to ‘Orpheus Britannicus’ in his Ode on the Death of Henry Purcell is a deeply moving token of the younger composer’s admiration. Alas, Clarke too was destined to die in his prime, and we can only imagine what the destiny of British music might have been if their lives had been prolonged. After an acclaimed production of Dido and Aeneas, Vincent Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique continue their exploration of the world of Purcell and seventeenth-century English music. Constantly keeping an ear out for multiple musical ramifications, from Dowland to Lully by way of the Elizabethan masques, this new programme spotlights the genius of Jeremiah Clarke, whose sadly premature death makes us regret all the marvels he might have produced. Here is a collection of masterpieces coupling two of Purcell’s most popular works with an exceptional discovery. (c) Alpha Classics
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Le Poème Harmonique, Ensemble Aedes, Vincent Dumestre – Lalande: Majesté (Collection Château de Versailles) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:32 minutes | 1,37 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
In 1682, Versailles became the main residence of Louis XIV and it needed new assistant chapel masters; in the end, the King imposed his choice, and that was Lalande, the King’s favourite, a young man of 26 who would become Versailles’s great composer of religious music. Bringing a new vision of the orchestra after the inflexible Lully, he dared to create completely new musical architectures, with new orchestral combinations that his predecessors never attempted, foregrounding some rarer solo instruments. In this sense, he represents the missing link between Lully and Rameau, the last scion of the French baroque orchestral tradition. For this record, a little stone in the monument to Lalande’s 77 great motets, Vincent Dumestre and his Poème harmonique have chosen to showcase his first sallies in writing for the Chapelle Royale with Ecce nuncfrom 1683 and above all the grandiose Deitatis majestatem from 1681, and the record runs up to the final corrections – Lalande incessantly edited his work – of the Te Deum. This work provides the most striking sonic image of majesty: the Te Deum, composed in 1684, was re-written many times up until the 1720s, the date of the final signed edition. This version, which shows the later development of Lalande’s writing, is also made remarkable because in it the composer has noted the precise duration of each verse! This gives us a precise idea of the metronomical tempos that he used – and what a precious tool for today’s musicians. This album, recorded in public at the Chapelle Royale in Versailles, follows this demanding and unflagging rhythm to within a few dozen seconds.
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Vincent Dumestre & Le Poème Harmonique – Cavalli: L’Egisto (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:05:27 minutes | 2,20 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles
In 1643 in Venice, Cavalli’s new opera caused a sensation among the audience of the Teatro San Cassiano. L’Egisto takes its name from the piece’s main character, an Arcadian shepherd who is misled by an ambiguous inscription into believing his love is lost. A succession of misunderstandings ensues, along with spectacular pieces of music, a scene of madness and a descent into the Underworld for this would-be Orpheus searching for his Eurydice. The sumptuousness of the music, which masterfully illustrates the emotions involved in a love quadrangle, offers Vincent Dumestre and his cast the opportunity to paint with dazzling colours and virtuoso strokes for this first great labyrinth of Baroque sentiment.
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Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre – Cœur, airs de cour français de la fin du XVIe siècle (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:04:14 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
In this new release, Vincent Dumestre’s Le Poème Harmonique once again immerses us in the France of the second half of the 16th century, which witnessed the emergence of new centres of artistic activity. These ‘bourgeois’ societies were initiated by patron princes concerned with building their prestige through the arts and letters just as much as by arms. At the same time, refined circles held by cultivated women enabled them to rub shoulders with the leading poets of the time, as well as musicians sensitive to humanist research, all profiting from a context propitious to the invention of new artistic forms and practices. The new, more lyrical poetry, inspired by both antiquity and contemporary Italian models, was matched, in particular, by the courtly air, a new musical genre perfectly adapted to the humanist ideals of sobriety and intelligibility of the text.
Through this music, still insufficiently known, this programme invites us to discover a refined poetic and musical universe, witness to a French Renaissance at its apogee, with works by composers such as Pierre Cléreau, Guillaume Costeley, Adrian Le Roy, and Didier Le Blanc.
As usual, Vincent Dumestre, uncontested master of these repertoires, has surrounded himself with the finest singers and instrumentalists, a loyal troupe that exhumes unusual musical treasures, letting us share in them.
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Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre, Hasnaa Bennani, Isabelle Druet, Claire Lefilliâtre – Clérambault: Miserere – Couperin: Leçons de ténèbres (Recording at La Chapelle Royale du Château de Versailles) (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:05:03 minutes | 1,06 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
When one looks at the biographies of famous prima donnas, the suspicion sometimes arises that opera is not really an art form but a way of life. At any rate, for many of its protagonists, the theatrics, the scheming and the scandalmongering of the stage appear to flow seamlessly into real life. And the situation in the eighteenth century was no different from today. Among the most famous and also the most notorious stars of European opera houses was the Italian diva Francesca Cuzzoni, whose extravagance must have been as phenomenal as her singing talent. Had there already been a gutter press in her time, La Cuzzoni would certainly have been one of the most reliable suppliers of headlines. But, even without tabloids, news of La Cuzzonis affairs got around quickly, and indeed seem to have played no small part in the fascination she exercised over her audience. Her early success, her fairytale fame and eventually her dramatic fall caught the imagination of the musical world. This CD features some of the most beautiful and breathtaking arias, composed for the diva by Handel.
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Capella Cracoviensis, Vincent Dumestre, Le Poeme Harmonique – Charpentier & Lully: Te Deum (Live Recording at La Chapelle Royale du Château de Versailles) (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:32 minutes | 993 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
This recording of the Poème Harmonique revitalizes Charpentier’s and Lully’s Te Deum, two magnificent pieces of sacred music celebrating the Sun King’s victory and recovery. Lully, who was of Italian origin, found the essence and style of French art, while Charpentier gave the emotion and composition methods he had learned from the Italians to the music of his country. This is the story of two musicians, two countries, two aesthetics, and two fundamental stakes. Lully became a lauded composer, outshining Charpentier and relegating him to an undeserved subpar position.
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Eva Zaïcik, Le Poème Harmonique & Vincent Dumestre – Nisi Dominus (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:29 minutes | 1,00 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
In the seventeenth century, the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice took in young orphan girls who received advanced musical instruction. The concerts given there attracted visitors from all over the world, curious to hear these divine voices which remained invisible, since the girls performed hidden behind the grilles of the chapel gallery. Vivaldi became Maestro de’ Concerti of the Pietà in 1714, and it was his pupils who performed his famous Nisi Dominus. Today they are succeeded by the mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik, who brings out the full poignancy of the aria ‘Cum dederit’. Another motet by Vivaldi, Invicti bellate, also composed for the Pietà, features in this programme planned and conducted by Vincent Dumestre. He invites us on a musical journey centred on the figure of woman and on divine praise, with composers awaiting discovery such as Serafino Razzi (1534-1619) and Soto de Langa (1531-1611).
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Vincent Dumestre, Le Poème Harmonique, Chœur de la Compagne La Tempête, Simon-Pierre Bestion – Les Noces Royales de Louis XIV (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:18 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Château de Versailles Spectacles
The wedding of Louis XIV with the Infanta of Spain, on 9 June 1660, was an exceptional event, sealing the peace between two monarchies that had been opposed for centuries. The 21-year-old King set off on a journey lasting thirteen months to cross and discover his kingdom: 15,000 people and 8,000 horses, 3,200 km in 95 stages, culminating in a wedding in Saint-Jean-de-Luz! The greatest festivities took place during the wedding ceremony, then on the journey of their Majesties, for their solemn entry into Paris and finally for the opera given in the Louvre in honour of the bride and groom! The finest composers contributed to the celebrations: the King’s trumpets opened the concert, while the church galleries hosted Du Mont’s symphony, organ and motets; finally, the most beautiful excerpts from Cavalli’s Xerxes and Lully’s accompanying ballets celebrated the Royal Wedding of Louis XIV through opera. Vincent Dumestre brings to life the musical splendours of the wedding of the century!
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