Le Concert Spirituel . Hervé Niquet

Although, as the saying goes, there's no accounting for taste, in seventeenth-century Paris violent disputes between adherents of the Italian and French baroque styles were the order of the day. For the latter group, the fact that opera slipped into French music history through an Italian backdoor, and that the royal 'surintendant de la musique' was Jean-Baptiste Lully, of Florentine origin, must have been a bitter pill to swallow. But they were wrong: Lully turned out to be the godfather of French opera! Charpentier also composed masterly operas. Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel shed light on another side of these two composers, throwing themselves into some of their finest sacred works, which reveal that they are heavily influenced by their opera writing. Charpentier's 'Magnificat' and Lully's 'O Dulcissime Domine' are put into a broader perspective alongside the marvellous polyphony of Louis Le Prince's 'Messe Macula non est in te', which has never previously been performed in a concert.