COMPOSERS: D'anglebert,Lully & Campra
LABELS: Harmonia Mundi
ALBUM TITLE: Chorégraphie
WORKS: Music for Louis XIV’s dancing masters by d’Anglebert, Lully & Campra
PERFORMER: Andrew Lawrence-King (triple harp)
CATALOGUE NO: HMU 907335
Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s Chorégraphie, published in Paris in 1700, was the first dance-manual to use symbols, rather than descriptive narratives, to indicate movements. This volume and its two-dozen successors set dances to new music alongside pieces that retained their popularity throughout Louis XIV’s reign: in this recital the ‘modern’ is represented by André Campra and Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, the classic by Lully.
Lawrence-King uses a triple harp, with a central, chromatic, course of strings. As ever, he tackles it with confidence and panache, and emerges with all digits intact.
He executes the elegant lines with clarity and grace, his nimble touch and fluid phrasing conjuring up images of the participants floating as much as dancing, detached from their Baroque physical surroundings.
Barry Witherden