Choeur & Orchestre Le Concert Spirituel olv. Hervé Niquet

What is your excuse for not listening to Lully? Too simple. Too sugary. Too melodious. Too French. Too baroque. Too much embellishment. Too little substance. Too generous to Louis XIV. To sparing with humanness… All wrong: this is simply marvellous music!
It’s true that the motets are very much of their time; political pamphlets set to music. They confirm the religious rights of the Sun King. They are just as much aesthetic experiments or, rather, blueprints for the future. Lully was after all the architect of the ‘Grand Motet’, a genre that he engendered and also gave definitive shape to. Its characteristics are the colourful effects in the chorus and orchestra, the interplay of contrasts between the soloist and chorus, and the subtle shifts and variations. All driven by a powerful imagination, like a kaleidoscope that can summon up thousands of impressions and feelings.
We find these same qualities in abundance in the work of Lully’s younger contemporary André Campra. Here too we hear scores that enchant us with their charming elegance. This music counters any objections. Especially when it is performed with the rhythmic drive, rhetorical precision and colourful ensemble playing of Hervé Niquet and his Concert Spirituel.