Denis Raisin Dadre, artistic director
Le Printemps
This is the first time that Le Printemps (1603) by Claude Le Jeune has been given such a facelift! The masterpiece of musique mesurée à l’antique (Renaissance music written to meters similar to those supposedly used in the ancient world) here finds itself shorn of all heaviness and monotony. The exceptional work of Denis Raisin-Dadre, in collaboration with prosody historian Olivier Bettens, aims to revitalize this polyphonic music, thanks to a greater rhythmic flexibility based on possibilities present in the text. They also makes use of the pronunciation of old French. The final touch in this extraordinary restoration is the addition of a quartet of “columnar recorders”, to subtly color the vocal polyphony with the unusual timbre of these instruments – which together sound like a small organ.
Durée totale : 63’58”