The Baroque Ensemble continues its program this Friday and Sunday with a concert of Couperin Suites.
The suite, composed of dance movements, finds in Couperin one of its eminent representatives. The brilliant collection “Les Goûts réunis ou Nouveaux concerts royaux” brings together suites played for King Louis XIV between 1714 and 1715 during small chamber concerts and was published about a decade later. An admirer of character pieces, free and imaginative, Couperin presents us in his 9th concert, Ritratto dell’Amore, with a “Portrait of Love,” where love à la française is evoked, tinged with Italian dalliances – charm, grace, pride or softness, and so forth.
In contrast, the 8th concert “in the theatrical taste” unfolds like a small opera without words, from the grandiloquence of the French-style overture to the tenderness of the airs, up to the liveliness of a Bacchantes air. The 11th concert is, in its turn, a suite of dances, featuring allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, rondeau, where the strings and winds of the Nice Baroque Ensemble bring all their shades of color.
SUITES, Couperin
Gilbert Bezzina, violin
Christophe Mazeaud, oboe & recorder
Michelle Rodriguez, flute
Christine Plubeau, viola da gamba
Vera Elliott, harpsichord
Sergio Basilico, theorbo
THE PROGRAM
François Couperin (1668-1733)
Les Goûts réunis ou Nouveaux concerts royaux
Eighth concert in the theatrical taste
Ouverture – Grande ritournelle (gravely) – Air (nobly) – Tender Air (Rondeau) – Loure (heavily) – Air (animated and light) – Light Air – Air of Bacchantes (very lively)
Ninth concert entitled Ritratto dell’Amore
The Charm (Gracefully and gravely) – The Cheerfulness – The Graces (French Courante) – The Je-ne-sais-quoi (Gaily) – The Vivacity – The Noble Pride (Sarabande) – The Softness (Amorously) – The Et Cætera (Minuet)
Eleventh concert
Majestically, without too much slowness – Allemande (Proudly, without slowness) – Second Allemande (lighter) – Courante – 2nd Courante – Sarabande (very grave and very marked) – Gigue (lilted) – Rondeau (lightly and gallantly)
