Dip Your Ears, No. 71 (With Touches of Charpentier)

M.-R. de Lalande, Les Folies de Cardenio, EBL, Christophe Coin Laborie

Touches of Charpentier and South American baroque – that’s what comes to mind listening to wonderful new release of Michel-Richard de Lalande’s Les Folies de Cardenio on the new Laborie label. Recording the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges (EBL Laborie is their own label) under Christophe Coin, they dug deep into the vault to exhume a neglected, if not forgotten, composer’s charming, wily ballet. The research and necessary restoration work has paid off handsomely.

Based on a story from Cervantès’ Don Quixote, the ballet composed for Louis XV is a foot-tappingly infectious baroque music with a few vocal elements (to the extend they survived or were possible to reconstruct) and, in accordance with the madness that goes on in the story, all kinds of percussion instruments are thrown in at various points – clinking and scattering and thumping about in a gay frenzy. The baroque guitar adds the Spanish flavor. It may not be great music – but it’s music that (given a predilection for baroque music and, e.g. the work of Jordi Savall – whose Don Quixote recording Charles discussed at length) is great to listen to if you want something outside the Telemann-Bach-Handel-Vivaldi fare. There is much and much more to discover out there – but this very fine recording, attractively presented, is an excellent place to start.

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LABORIE LC01