Etienne Lafrance, Karina Gauvin, Pentaedre, Pierre Mclean, Quatuor Molinari, Valerie Milot - Marie Hubert - Fille du Roy (2024) [Hi-Res]

Marie Hubert – Fille du Roy is the latest recording by the renowned Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. This intriguing album brings the folklores of Quebec and France to life using song to recount the experiences of Marie Hubert, one of the Filles du Roy (the King’s daughters) intended to help populate New France. Recruited as one of almost 800 marriageable French young women, Marie crossed the Atlantic at the end of the program, which was launched in 1670 by the Roi-Soleil, King Louis XIV, and Jean Talon, his intendant in New France.

For nearly a decade, Karina Gauvin had been yearning to record a selection of Québécois and French folk songs. Quite fortuitously, recent genealogical research has traced Gauvin’s family origins to Marie Hubert. In the midst of pandemic lockdowns, Gauvin examined the contents of an old chest of drawers and unearthed some scores handed down more than 30 years earlier by the aptly named soprano, Louise Roy.

Among these treasures were folk harmonizations from the first half of the twentieth century by such eminent Canadian musicians as Gabriel Cusson, Ernest MacMillan, Michel Perrault, and Oscar O’Brien, to name just a few. Going through these scores with pianist Pierre McLean, Gauvin selected the songs for this new album, which feature orchestrations by Claude Lapalme and two arrangements for piano and harpsichord by Pierre McLean.

From Belle rose du printemps to Gai lon la, gai le rosier, and from Isabeau s’y promène to Les cloches du hameau, Karina Gauvin brings rich colors to these folk songs in new arrangements for strings, winds, harp, and piano by Claude Lapalme, with Pierre McLean (piano), Valérie Milot (harp), Étienne Lafrance (double bass), Quatuor Molinari, and Pentaèdre.