Cantates françaises

Description

After an album dedicated to Bach, tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen and his ensemble A Nocte Temporis present a program of French music, focused on Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749), a very precocious musician and author of four books comprising a total of 21 cantatas. Reinoud Van Mechelen offers us a selection of these French Cantatas: Le Jaloux with its final aria "Dieu des amants," Apollon, L’Amour guéri par l’amour, and Pyrame et Thisbé, drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Clérambault weaves together recitative, arias, and symphonies, much like in a lyrical tragedy. The young Flemish tenor, 30 years old, continues an astonishing solo career alongside great baroque conductors (Christie, Pichon, Niquet), but he is keen to develop his personal projects and his ensemble: "I am a purist but without elitism. Music should please people. It may require some effort and involves different criteria than those, somewhat flashy, of society, politics, and money. But music should be something more than just a simple distraction, and many people are actually looking for that," he confides to the Belgian newspaper Le Soir in 2017, when the Prix Caecilia names him "Artist of the Year."