The surviving musical edition of Dutch Golden Age “Renaissance Man”, Constantijn Huygens receives a fresh new recording – issued on Glossa – from a singer who has become a connoisseur of vocal music from the seventeenth century: Cyril Auvity.

In 1700, Corelli published his 12 violin sonatas, Opus 5, in Rome. A veritable revolution in violin technique, they won the admiration of eminent composers (Bach, Dandrieu, Couperin) and greatly influenced the French (Francoeur, Leclair, Senaillé, Quentin), who were to try their hand at this virtuoso and brilliant Italian style. At the end of the 1730s, the first six sonatas of opus 5 were "adapted to the transverse flute with the bass" by a Parisian publisher. The level of virtuosity they demanded was quite innovative at the time. This display of virtuosity is also to be found in the compositions of Jean-Baptiste Quentin, known as Le Jeune. We have very little biographical information on Quentin himself, but all his work is greatly inspired by Italian music and is heavily influenced by Corelli. Anna Besson has made the world's first recording of his sonatas, with the help of two other eminent performers of the new Baroque generation, Myriam Rignol on viola da gamba and Jean Rondeau on harpsichord.

Could Bach’s Suites be most representative of his French identity? Composed in Germany around 1720 at the Court of Köthen, like the Brandenburg Concertos, for a Francophile and gambist, they find in Myriam Rignol’s vision and vibrant embodiment an unmistakable French flavour, transcended by the viola da gamba! When an exceptional talent meets the instrument that makes Bach resound in Versailles, lending it the rhythm of the dances so dear to Louis, in a polyphony like no other, Johann Sebastian dazzles in the Palace of the Sun King…

Henriette de Coligny, Comtesse de La Suze, was more than just a woman of letters admired in her time, even by the very demanding Boileau. It was as a free woman that she married for love; after the death of her husband, a second one was forced on her, but, still a free woman, she demanded to be ‘de-married’! Surrounded by expert musicians, Marc Mauillon shows us that her précieux poetic universe mixes tenderness with the most unexpected strokes of audacity, so much so that her verse inspired many composers of the Grand Siècle – and after!