Jordi Savall & Le Concert des Nations - Le Concert Spirituel: Au temps de Louis XV (2010) [SACD]

This Jordi Saval album, that was delayed in the post & just arrived, fits nicely at the end of the Telemann mini series
The ‘concert spirituel’ was 1 of the 1st public concert series in existence. The concerts began in Paris in 1725 & ended in 1790. The series was founded to provide entertainment during Lent & on religious holidays when the other spectacles (the Paris Opera, Comédie-Française, & Comédie-Italienne) were closed. The programmes featured a mixture of sacred choral works & virtuosic instrumental pieces, & for many years took place in a magnificently-decorated Salle des Cent Suisses (Hall of the Hundred Swiss Guards) in the Tuileries Palace. They started at 6pm & were primarily attended by well-to-do bourgeois, the lower aristocracy & foreign visitors.
Jordi Savall brings these magnificent evenings back to life, thanks to an imaginary ‘concert spirituel’ programme featuring 3 major composers from Italy, Germany & France: Corelli, Telemann & Rameau. This album enables us to (re)discover the quintessence of the musical life during the reign of Louis XV.
SA-CD.net:
Review by JJ September 14, 2010 (4 of 6 found this review helpful)
Performance: Sonics:
The new recording by Jordi Savall is devoted to the Concert Spirituel at the time of Louis XV, with works by Corelli (Concert Grosso in D major Op.6 N°4), Telemann (Overture with the Suite in D minor TWV 55:D6, Concerto in A minor, Overture with the Suite in E minor “Tafelmusik” TWV 55:e1), and Rameau (Les Indes Galantes, Suite des airs à jouer). The Concert Spirituel saw the light of day in 1725, and as Michael Hurd notes, it programmed every year a series of 24 public concerts, and did so until 1791. Founded by the oboist Anne Danican Philidor, they were in fact “benefits” given during the periods (like Lent) when other spectacles were forbidden. The term “spiritual” indicated, at least at first, that religious music was the major component.” Which is not the case in the program Jordi Savall has concocted. Rather, accompanying and directing the Concert des Nations, he plunges us into a universe of overwhelming musical beauty in which charm predominates from the beginning to end of the scores performed, with a little something extra in poetic delicacy for the work of Rameau. Here is, quite simply, a must-have SACD.