Le Concert Spirituel

Hervé Niquet revisits the gloriously rich world of 17th-century French sacred music with his musicians from Le Concert Spirituel, bringing our attention to Louis Le Prince. A barely known composer, he worked in Lisieux in Lower Normandy.

Niquet intersperses the maître de chapelle’s 'Missa Macula non est in te' with a mighty handful of motets by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Mass and motets are given in versions for female voices and instruments. Whilst some of the pieces sung here were written specifically for high voices, it was a regular practice in the Baroque era to perform polyphonic masses with forces locally available and, thus, convents could well have sung Le Prince’s six-part mass – a homage to the Virgin Mary – making use of female singers. This practice is outlined by Fannie Vernaz in her accompanying booklet article and follows in the line of Hervé Niquet’s exploration of the Requiem Mass by Pierre Bouteiller (a work which he adapted for a choir consisting only of male voices).

The gorgeous sonorities of Charpentier’s motets (and a petit motet by Jean-Baptiste Lully) contribute to an Office constructed by Hervé Niquet around the Ordinary of the Mass by Louis Le Prince, to demonstrate with great clarity the variety of the musical glories of Louis XIV’s grand siècle.

First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1802, 'Sémiramis' by Charles-Simon Catel is an example of the revival at that time of the tragédie lyrique inherited from Gluck. A work with a touch of exoticism (Babylon), expressing the pathos of isolation, but also with pomp in its ambitious finales, the work bade farewell to the ‘Louis-XVI style’ and announced, in a neo-Classical style, the grand opéra of the Romantic period. But it came at a time of polemics between supporters and detractors of the new Paris Conservatoire, where Catel, at that time professor of harmony there, had made so many enemies that the audience pit at the Opera was bristling with vengeful hostility when the curtain rose on the first act...

Hervé Niquet and his Le Concert Spirituel, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary, continue their untiring rehabilitation of forgotten tragédies lyriques (we might recall here their 'Callirhoé' by Destouches, 'Sémélé' by Marais, 'Proserpine' by Lully and 'Andromaque' by Grétry) with this recording of Catel’s Sémiramis made during the course of the Festival de Radio France, in Montpellier, in July 2011. The typical skill of Niquet when it comes to selecting singers – among those who shine here are Maria Riccarda Wesseling and Andrew Foster-Williams – further helps to make this new operatic release a stimulating surprise for all lovers of the best in French music.

Recorded in the Salle Colonne, Paris, January 2011.

Performance edition prepared by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles (CMBV)

Whilst the court of the ageing Louis XIV was endeavouring to conserve the spirit of the Grand Siècle at Versailles, Paris was already humming with the new ideas of the Age of Enlightenment. With its prologue and three festive acts, its exotic dances and its virtuoso arias in Italian, Le Carnaval de Venise was one of the most original experiences to be had in musical drama at the time, one which was to earn Campra the reputation as the new maestro of French opera, as well as of being the musical eulogist for the Regency. In a magisterial act of conflation, this composer blends the styles of Lully, Lalande, Monteverdi and Cavalli and manages also to foreshadow Handel and Rameau. He dreamt up a multi-hued score, capable of recapturing in Paris both the carnival spirit in general and that of the legendary Venice in particular.

With this Carnaval de Venise Le Concert Spirituel and Hervé Niquet add a new title to their tireless work of recovering operatic jewels from those prodigious 17th and 18th centuries, amongst which we can mention here Proserpine by Lully, Sémélé by Marais and Andromaque by Grétry, all released on Glossa.

Hervé Niquet returns to the sacred music of the French Baroque in the grand manner: the ceremonial masterpiece of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's concertante Missa Assumpta est Maria, written for solo and choral voices with orchestral accompaniment, a clear reflection of the composer's mature style, written in the last decade of his life. Maturity definitely comes through also in Niquet's interpretation (and this is his fifth recording of music by Charpentier for Glossa alone): a sureness of touch in this repertoire is underpinned by a painstaking scrutiny of the sources, allowing the French conductor to make some original choices for the interpolations within the Mass Ordinary sections - instrumental and vocal in symphonies and motets. Zest, vigour and lightness of touch remain potent elements of Niquet's approach for the music of this most spectacular of French composers. This sense of understanding for the style which will also be applied shortly for the little-known five-voice Requiem of Charpentier's contemporary, Pierre Bouteiller - but which Niquet describes as "a diamond, an incredible jewel of our culture." Niquet's indefatigable approach to the music of the French Baroque and Classical eras extends currently also to the operatic world. After the success of his revival of the 300 year-old opera Sémélé by Marin Marais, he and Le Concert Spirituel turn next to André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry…

For his latest recording directing Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet has revived Sémélé by Marin Marais - the final opera by one of the leading composers from the reign of Louis XIV. Known for his compositions for viola da gamba, Marais was also the author of a number of tragédies lyriques which he wrote for the Académie royale de Musique. However, only Alcyone has attracted any attention. Sémélé, first performed in 1709, has music to charm and seduce: a sparkling prologue honouring Bacchus, a set of arias with freshly-minted appeal, a marvellously inventive diabolical scene; all leading up to an earthquake scene that anticipates the later work of Rameau. For all lovers of baroque music, here is the opportunity to discover and enjoy a masterpiece which has lain in the shadows for the last three centuries.

26 years ago, Hervé Niquet recalls having become so incensed with the disparaging remarks directed at French music and the 'Lamentations' of Jean Gilles' in particular' by a conductor of a choir in which he was then singing that Niquet vowed to set up his own ensemble and record the work – and demonstrate furthermore other beauties of music from his country (and beyond). And so Le Concert Spirituel was born, now celebrating its quarter century, its vocal and instrumental forces constantly delighting audiences with its joyous celebration of music from the 17th and 18th centuries (and now with Charles-Simon Catel’s Sémiramis, the dawn of the 19th). To mark the anniversary, Glossa is now issuing an attractively-priced double-disc celebration, with Niquet pulling out the stops from across Le Concert Spirituel’s broad and expansive range (and he started musical life as an organist, after all): Baroque sacred music, Marc-Antoine Charpentier assuredly; selections from Le Concert Spirituel’s “re-oxygenation”, as he calls it, of the tragédie lyrique (Grétry, Campra, Destouches), but also demonstrations of his own nimble-footed theatrical tendency (Niquet is an avowed fan of the musichall!) in Handel, Purcell and Striggio. Musical ostentation and bravura are concluded on each disc by some of Niquet’s own special bonnes bouches: Boismortier, D’Agincour, Marais and excerpts from his 'other' Charpentier (Gustave). All accompanied by a sparkling apéritif from the conductor himself about how Le Concert Spirituel came to reach its 25th anniversary!