Ensemble Battistin - The Perfection of Music: Masterpieces of the French Baroque (2013)

Packaged for the first time together in this stunning 5CD box set, The Perfection of Music: Masterpieces of the French Baroque from Ensemble Battistin is a banquet of musical delights from the golden age of Parisian elegance and sophistication.

The spirit of the composers lives and breathes through Ensemble Battistin’s inspired performances, and in their hands this glorious music springs to life with new passion and excitement.

In common with other period-instrument ensembles around the world, Ensemble Battistin takes a scholarly, historically informed approach to their interpretations, in association with the University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University. But as the 18th-century French musician Pierre Gillier reminds us, the spirit of the composer is an essential ingredient, and one which cannot always be found on the printed page. Ensemble Battistin have immersed themselves in this specialist field for years, developing a level of musical intuition which brings about a truly captivating performance.

The first of the series, French Baroque Cantatas, takes us to the intimate surrounds of the Parisian salons, where composers like Montéclair and Stuck, drawing on timeless stories from Greek mythology, were exploring new ways to express the subtleties of the drama through the power of music alone.

The Concert Spirituel was a public concert series held on religious festival days, when the theatres and the Opéra were officially closed. It provided encouragement for a new breed of French composers to write sonatas, motets and other chamber music in a style uniting the French and Italian ideals of music at the time. This beautiful album features Ensemble Battistin with flautist Kate Clark and violinist Sophie Gent, as well as the vocal talents of Sara Macliver in an exquisite, rarely heard motet.

The Concert Français was the secular rival to the Concert Spirituel: a popular Parisian program performed once or twice a week, with professional musicians showcasing the works of mainly French composers. This album is based on actual 18th-century concert programs performed at the Palace of the Tuileries, and features works by Lambert, Battistin, Bernier and Philidor. Sopranos Taryn Fiebig and Sara Macliver star with the Ensemble.

The Palais-Royal brings to life the cosmopolitan flair that characterised aristocratic Paris at the end of the 17th century. Composers and artists were beginning to turn away from the intense, inward focus that had characterised music at the court of Versailles, and to embrace new ideas from elsewhere, notably Italy. The disc features music by composers Gillier, Mascitti and Bernier, plus a tiny sample of the compositional talents of King Philippe II himself.

The Musician’s Table reveals how Paris in the early 18th century was the scene of a cultural revolution, as musicians steeped in the refinement of the French Baroque tradition continued to experiment with imported styles from Italy. It seemed that grace and poise were on a collision course with exuberant virtuosity, but instead, the two miraculously merged into a new music of extraordinary beauty and dramatic power. François Couperin called it ‘the perfection of music’, and three centuries later, we can only agree.