Ricercar Consort

Weckmann's musical training took place in Dresden under the direction of Heinrich Schütz, then in Hamburg where he worked with Praetorius. Weckmann travelled to Denmark in 1637 with Schütz, where his Lüneberg manuscript has been lurking, wrongly attributed to Christoph Bernhard. Weckmann became organist in Dresden at the Electoral Court of Saxony from 1638 to 1642, and returned to Denmark until 1647 (during the Thirty Years' War).

During a new (and his last) stay in Dresden from 1649 to 1655, he met Johann Jakob Froberger during a musical competition which had been organised by the Elector. They remained friends and in correspondence with each other. In 1655, after a competition, he was named titular organist at Saint James church (Jakobkirche) in Hamburg, and spent his remaining life there. He founded a renowned orchestral ensemble, the so-called Collegium Musicum in Hamburg in 1660. This was the most productive period of his life: his compositions of this time include this collection of 1663, which sets visionary settings of biblical texts evoking images of desolation and destruction, but also struggle and hope. It was inspired by the terrible plague which killed his first wife and many of his colleagues in Hamburg that year, including Heinrich Scheidemann.

Matthias Weckmann died in Hamburg c1674 and was buried in a family grave in the Jacobkirche, beneath the organ.

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.