Concert Spirituel Ensemble - Les 25 ans !!!: Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet (2012)

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 was born Le Concert Spirituel, now celebrating its quarter century, its vocal and instrumental forces throughout that time 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 music:hall!) 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!