Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres
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FRANCOIS COUPERIN
Couperin: Leçons de Ténèbres
Lucy Crowe (soprano) & Elizabeth Watts (sopranos) / La Nuova Musica, David Bates
[ Harmonia Mundi SACD / Hybrid SACD ]
Release Date: Friday 9 September 2016
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François Couperin's 'Leçons de Ténèbres' (c. 1713-17), a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, fused devotional expression with a dramatic performing style embodied here by sopranos Lucy Crowe and Elizabeth Watts. Two Trio Sonatas and a 'Stabat Mater' by Sébastien de Brossard round out this luminous programme.
La Nuova Musica was founded by its artistic director David Bates in 2007 whilst in residency at Snape Maltings and was hailed by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the most exciting consorts in the early music field". They are regular contributors at Aldeburgh Music, St John's Smith Square, London Handel Festival, Wigmore Hall and Spitalfields Music. Highlights of 2015 were a performance of 'Acis and Galatea' at SJSS which received a 5* review in The Times, describing it as "a reading that sparkled from the giddy overture to the consoling final chorus" followed by a concert performance of Cesti's 'Orontea', where "Bates' conducting had superb poise, and the cast was impeccable, with not a weak link anywhere" (The Guardian).
In 2016 LNM will also record Pergolesi's 'Stabat Mater' and Bach Cantatas with Lucy Crowe and Tim Mead. Concert performance highlights for 2016 include Handel's 'Berenice' at the Göttingen Internationale Händel Festspiele; their debut at the Salzburg Festival with Bejun Mehta; and an exciting collaboration with American choreographer Zack Winokur on Purcell's 'Dido and Aeneas' at the Brighton International Festival, with Dame Ann Murray singing the title role.
"Two of the UK's finest early music voices divvy up Les Leçons de Ténèbres…Crowe is ecstatic and golden, ravishing in her upper flourishes…Watts is grainier, softer-edged, earthier. When they sing together in the third lesson, the combination is breathtaking" The Guardian, 8th September 2016
"such an intelligent choice of voices…both with a lovely purity and clarity, both ornamenting effectively, with Crowe's more tightly focussed sound contrasting very well with Watt's more voluptuous tone and vibrato." Record Review, 24th September 2016
"Bates directs some very fine performances here. Both instrumentalists and voices of La Nuova Musica are terrific as are the two soloists in the Trois Leçons de Tenebres, Lucy Crowe and Elizabeth Watts. The excellent SACD recording is set in a lovely acoustic with a real sense of presence and detail." The Classical Reviewer, 26th September 2016
"a dramatic, well-paced performance that shows Brossard's slender if learned talent to best effect. Unlike Schneebeli, who employed boy sopranos and Old French pronunciation of the Latin texts, Bates produces a more modern, full-bodied sound, and it is the grands choeurs rather than the petits choeurs that most impress." Gramophone Magazine, October 2016
"Crowe here offers an intense and dramatic reading of the first Leçon … Elizabeth Watts takes centre stage in the second setting - her voice plummy and voluptuous … The two join in an impassioned and operatically-inspired performance of the final Leçon … the performing forces are expanded for Brossard's highly-charged setting of the Stabat Mater, its grief-filled text delivered with raw and plangent expressivity." BBC Music Magazine, December 2016 ****
"Having two soloists of the calibre of Lucy Crowe and Elizabeth Watts ensures that the vocal line positively gleams, and there is a beautifully limpid quality throughout. They are flexible yet also a little fragile, well suited to the pleading nature of the text…Brossard's Trio Sonatas provide some earnest instrumental variety. They're beautifully played, and the thin string tone adds a plangent air to what you find in the more explicitly penitential vocal music" MusicWeb International, January 2017
