Jean-Baptiste Lully - Acis and Galatee - Minkowski, Les Musiciens du Louvre

 

Release Date: September 12, 2006 Label: Archiv Produktion  Number of discs: 2 Composer: Jean-Baptiste Lully Performer: Marc Minkowski, Les Musiciens du Louvre  cd info/ buy

Review:

Jean-Baptiste Lully (né Giovanni Baptista,1632-1687) has the honor of belonging to the vast group of non-French who, for their time, set the very idiom of "French" music (Eric Satie is a more current example). Lully, and his party of "Lullistes," advocated a priority of text over music, or let us say rather than the one was not permitted to obfuscate the other. Minkowski's recording -himself no slouch as a conductor of music of sumptuous vocality -has put together an expert cast that allows this slightly frothy pastoral romp a dignity and pathos less apparent in Handel's version of this story. Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, who along with Veronique Gens incarnated the titular heroes of the "anti-Lully" Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (also under Minkowski's baton), are the tragic lovers whose distinctly French articulations of the drama are sure bets. I welcome the long-awaited return of Howard Crook (Apollo), as the well as the participation of the déliceuse Mireille Delunsch (Vénus) with equal joy. With period instruments, masterfully played by Les Musiciens du Louvre.

 

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