Hervé Niquet

October 12, 2017 at PDT

Handel: Messiah 1754

Abandoned children and destitute orphans helped make Messiah one of the most popular of all sacred choral works. Handel’s oratorio, first performed in Dublin in 1742, left its early London audiences stone cold. The work finally took off in England’s capital in 1750, when the composer directed a performance in the new chapel of the Foundling Hospital and set the trend for Messiah as an annual fixture in the charitable institution’s fundraising calendar. It soon reached Italy, parts of Germany, and the then-British province of New York to become international property long before the Steam Age.

Conductor Hervé Niquet has had a long relationship with the piece. “I sang Messiah as a treble 55 years ago, and the piece has never left me since,” he tells Apple Music. Niquet’s recording revisits the 1754 Foundling performance, the first for which precise details of Handel’s instrumentation and the considerable size of his orchestra and chorus have survived. “The 1754 version uses five soloists instead of four and has more of a sacred-opera feel,” says Niquet. The album, made shortly before Christmas 2016, gains in depth and presence of sound via a remastering in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos that brings the listener even more inside the vocal and orchestral textures and underlines the confessional urgency of the conductor’s interpretation. Messiah becomes a sacred opera in Niquet’s hands, propelled not least by the drama of Christ’s brutal humiliation in the work’s second part. His fine soloists, especially tenor Rupert Charlesworth and soprano Sandrine Piau, treat the prophecy of the Savior’s coming and the narrative of Christ’s nativity, passion, and resurrection with genuine empathy and breathe new life into the antique English of the King James Bible.

There’s little room for reflection in this Messiah: the story is told rapidly, as if being filed from the front line of the battle between good and evil. The “Lamb of God” is led to the slaughter by a mocking choral crowd, played with chilling commitment by the 27 voices of Le Concert Spirituel. Their motivation—and that of the performance as a whole—is driven by the weight of mankind’s destructive nature before being checked by the overwhelming force of God’s redeeming love, the latter signaled with triumphant joy in the “Hallelujah” chorus and by a divine performance of the oratorio’s final “Amen” fugue. “With their considerable experience in opera,” adds Niquet, “the entire Concert Spirituel team brings an overwhelming power to a story that has, for centuries, shaken humanity.”

47 Tracks

October 12, 2017 at PDT

Handel: Messiah, HWV 56 (1754 Version)

Handel continued to revise his oratorio Messiah after its first performance in 1742, changing the scoring and adding soloists to suit the forces available to him. Here you can enjoy the 1754 version with five soloists instead of four, but it’s the pure energy of this performance that will strike you. Everything about it seems newly minted, from the sweetness of “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted” to the sheer vitality of the “Hallelujah” chorus, exultant but never rambunctious. Conductor Hervé Niquet and his musicians bring out the operatic scope and flow of this perennial masterpiece—and it’s thrilling.

47 Tracks

August 15, 2024 at PDT

Fauré: Requiem - Gounod: Messe de Clovis

French composer Gabriel Fauré was lumbered, by all accounts, with a sub-standard choir at the church of La Madeleine in Paris, where he was organist. Somehow, however, he still mustered the enthusiasm to compose for them one of his best-loved works. This performance of the Requiem (featuring top-flight singers) uses the 1893 orchestral scoring in which Fauré omits violins and woodwind. This seemingly odd choice had its logic. The organ at La Madeleine was light on two-foot registers and mixtures, meaning that its sound was deep and luxurious—a match, perhaps, for the church’s heavy-set gilded interior. Fauré clearly wanted organ and orchestra to dovetail.

Hervé Niquet recreates that orchestral intensity with just 16 players plus organ, complemented by a chamber choir of 24 singers. The resulting blend is remarkable, heard to greatest effect in the “Kyrie” and the melodically inspired “Agnus Dei.”

Partnering the Requiem is a rare curiosity. Composed for choir and organ, Gounod’s Messe de Clovis was published posthumously in 1896 and evokes Gregorian chant and Palestrina-like counterpoint, all within a sophisticated 19th-century sensibility. It receives a fine performance here, the clarity of the playing and singing shining welcome light on Gounod’s understated craftsmanship.

Two small works, by Aubert and Caplet (the latter orchestrated Debussy’s “Clair de lune” to great effect) provide a charming sign-off, and a window into the music that would have been heard wafting down from Paris’ famed organ lofts during the mid- to late-19th century.

15 Tracks

March 14, 2024 at PDT

Paysage

The story of 19th- and early-20th-century French music is as much social as it is musical. All across Paris, the wealthy and well connected would throw open their doors to artists, philosophers, writers, poets, and, of course, musicians. Even in a city that prided itself for world premiere performances, there were precious few opportunities to hear songs and music for smaller ensembles. So the “soirée” became an invaluable forum for such new works. Audiences were small and appreciative—and the food and drink flowed freely.

Most of the songs in Paysage are products of this heady salon culture, and were premiered in their original versions for voice and piano. Some, however, were subsequently rearranged for orchestra, but never performed as such. It’s these that we get to hear on this impressively researched and beautifully performed album. “There are hundreds of these songs, but they’re lost,” says soprano Véronique Gens, who together with the Palazzetto Bru Zane—otherwise known as the Centre for Romantic French Music—have rediscovered a musical treasure trove.

“These versions were lost because the composers arranged them as presents for singers. And the singers kept the orchestrations in their houses and amongst their things. When they died, nobody knew about them. All these songs are like jewels, and with orchestra they are even more beautiful.”

Take, for instance, Fauré’s “Les Roses d’Ispahan” from his 4 Mélodies Op. 39, a song for voice and piano that many singers have in their repertoire. Hardly anyone, however, has heard it in its orchestrated form. “I’d been singing many of these songs so many times before with piano,” says Gens, “and suddenly the color was so different—everything was so much easier with an orchestra.

“‘Les Roses d’Ispahan’ is a very beautiful song, and it represents so well the French song and the melancholy atmosphere many of them have,” continues Gens. “They’re not like Schubert lieder where, when you are desperate, you really are desperate and you want to die. With French song, when you are desperate, it’s in a soft way, in an elegant way. It’s always melancholy, but it’s a nice melancholy. It makes you almost feel good.”

Gens also highlights the songs by Théodore Dubois, an unknown composer except among organists for his Toccata in G. “I like very much ‘Celui que j’aime’—there is something very honest about it,” she says. “It’s so direct, and the harmonies are very simple. I also love his two small orchestral pieces, the Petits rêves d’enfants. They’re just amazing, and it’s not fair that Dubois just disappeared from history.”

The heart to much of the diaphanous music on Paysage, which also includes works by Hahn, Chausson, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and Massenet, lies in the texts themselves. For Gens, the poetry, much of it about love, is as important as the notes, so for non-French speakers it’s worth hunting out the translations to them. “The composers rely on the text, and the colors they give to them are overwhelming—they shine a special light on every single word. The music really does carry the text.”

Which means that singers don’t have to impose their own interpretations. Everything is there in the score. “It’s not a question of having a big voice and making a big noise,” says Gens. “We are here to tell a story, and to offer something very delicate and very special. It’s already so beautiful, so there’s nothing to add, no mannerism. You just have to sing it with your heart and then everything will be there.”

22 Tracks

October 28, 2021 at PDT

The Proust Album

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is full of musical references, from Beethoven and Wagner to Fauré, Franck, and the fictional composer Vinteuil, whose music forms an integral part of the books’ marriage of heart and mind. Proust developed his musical loves through concerts at fashionable Parisian soirées, often with his friend and lover, the composer Reynaldo Hahn. Pianist Shani Diluka’s fascinating exploration of Proust’s musical world begins, in fact, with a rare performance of Hahn’s heady Concerto in E Major, before she takes us on a tour through Chaminade, Wagner, Strauss, and Fauré’s song “Le Secret.” The only piece referenced in In Search of Lost Time, it’s sensually performed here by soprano Natalie Dessay. Tantalizingly and credibly, Diluka, alongside violinist Pierre Fouchenneret, imagines how Vinteuil’s violin sonata might have sounded, piecing together beautiful works by Hahn, Ysaÿe, and Chaminade.

20 Tracks

August 18, 2022 at PDT

Handel: Coronation Anthems

Handel, who did so much to reinforce British identity at a crucial period in the nation’s history, was a German who spent many of his best years writing Italian opera. The composer’s international outlook inevitably left its mark on his music, a point explored over the past 40 years by Hervé Niquet as both singer and, since 1987, founder/conductor of Le Concert Spirituel. Anyone familiar with Handel’s four Coronation Anthems, especially the first of the set, Zadok the Priest, should prepare for provocations and thrills galore in Niquet’s gripping interpretations, which add touches of Versailles splendor to music written for George II, a German-born English king not known for extravagance. Zadok’s orchestral introduction, hallmarked here by arresting dynamic shadings, motors along under Niquet’s direction. It flows seamlessly into the choir’s first entry, more regal pronouncement than sudden shout, which in turn prepares the way for an impassioned choral delivery of “God save the king” and the rapid-fire “Alleluias” that follow it.

Niquet vehemently denies that he has an “approach” to Zadok and its companion pieces. “I observe what a coronation is,” he notes. “It says that when Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint Solomon, he is King. It’s not about making musical firecrackers! It’s about the violence and suddenness of the change from a simple man to suddenly becoming God’s representative on earth. Handel describes this in an astonishing way by bringing in 10 trumpets and a huge choir. Their purpose is to make the world tremble and other nations hear that we now have a king, and that it is better for your own sake to keep away from any evil intentions towards us. It’s called a deterrent!”

Le Concert Spirituel displays the wealth of Handel’s orchestral writing in just about every measure of the Coronation Anthems and in the equally vital Te Deum, written for the thanksgiving service held to honor George II’s victory over the French at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743. The choir and orchestra, almost exclusively populated by French musicians, catch the pride and fervor pumped by Handel into music composed for two royal occasions.

“Given the reductive parameters set for the composer for both occasions, one might expect a well-crafted, effective but blinged-out work without much depth,” says Niquet. “In reality, Handel understood that the whole nation was ‘on fire’ for these two events: a coronation and a victory. He intensified the feelings of the British people on these occasions with brilliant writing. All the members of Le Concert Spirituel, knowing the historical context but unaware of the visceral impact of a king’s coronation on the British people, felt as if they had a volcano in their hands that was beyond them. Harmony and rigor helped us deal with these torrents of lava and fire.”

27 Tracks

February 28, 2005 at PST

Discover Music of the Baroque Era

41 Tracks

June 6, 1999 at PDT

Grands Motets, Vol.1

14 Tracks

May 31, 1993 at PDT

Essential Masses, Vol. 1

265 Tracks

December 31, 2007 at PST

Handel: Water Music & Music for the Royal Fireworks

25 Tracks

June 18, 2020 at PDT

Lully: Armide 1778

63 Tracks

May 24, 2018 at PDT

Benevolo: Missa si Deus pro nobis & Magnificat

Born in Rome in 1605 to a Burgundian father, Orazio Benevolo studied at the choir school of San Luigi dei Francesi, becoming one of the great composers of polyphonic music of his time and ending his career as maestro di cappella at the Vatican. His Missa si Deus pro nobis is scored for eight four-part choirs alongside 15 continuo players and, with this debut recording, takes its place beside the major Baroque works for massed voices. Its majesty is profoundly impressive and Hervé Niquet inspires his splendid ensemble Le Concert Spirituel to give a magnificent and awe-inspiring performance.

15 Tracks

June 25, 2020 at PDT

Charpentier: Messe pour Monsieur Mauroy, H. 6

17 Tracks

February 28, 2005 at PST

Vermeer: Music of His Time

24 Tracks

October 31, 2019 at PDT

Berlioz: Messe Solennelle

14 Tracks

March 16, 2023 at PDT

Marais: Ariane et Bacchus

104 Tracks

December 31, 2008 at PST

Charpentier, M.-A.: Missa Assumpta Est Maria

33 Tracks

April 27, 2009 at PDT

Eternal Baroque

11 Tracks

December 31, 2006 at PST

Lully: Proserpine

57 Tracks

January 4, 2024 at PST

Charpentier: Médée

120 Tracks

June 23, 2022 at PDT

Massenet: Songs with Orchestra

25 Tracks

February 29, 2012 at PST

Striggio: Mass for 40 & 60 Voices

17 Tracks

October 27, 2008 at PDT

Eternal Voice

14 Tracks

December 31, 1997 at PST

Rameau: Les grands motets

24 Tracks