Musique Pour Mazarin! - Le Jardin Secret

Music For Mazarin is the debut recording by le Jardin Secret winners of both the first prize and audience prize at the Early Music Network Young Artists Competition in 2007.

This talented ensemble of young musicians - comprising soprano, harpsichord, theorbo, viola da gamba and baroque cello - present a delightfully varied program featuring a mixture of French and Italian music that would have been heard at the court of the flamboyant Cardinal Mazarin.

The juxtaposition of French and Italian works on this disc clearly shows the rich selection of music heard at Mazarin's court in the late 1600s. The works demonstrate the stark contrast between French and Italian styles of the period with the added ingredient of political and cultural rivalry and intrigue - the Italian born Cardinal importing Italian culture to a resistant French court contributes a little "piquancy" to the mix!

On this disc, which includes songs by Charpentier, extracts of operas by Lully and Cavalli and the delightful, if at times brutal, 'Mazarinades', le Jardin Secret bring alive the emotive energy of the music, opening the door to the aesthetic world of this Baroque period in all its beguiling beauty.

Artists
le Jardin Secret:
Elizabeth Dobbin soprano
David Blunden harpsichord
Sofie Vanden Eynde theorbo & Baroque guitar
Romina Lischka viola da gamba
Marian Minnen baroque cello & bass violin
Reviews

'This is a Remarkably well-thought-out program containing very few familiar parts. Of real historical interest are the two examples of the prolific "Mazarinades" ... la Jardin Secret's harpsichordist is David Blunden, an outstandingly gifted young Australian musician, who storms through the room blazing with confidence and technical prodigious. Soprano Elizabeth Dobbin is another young Australian artist of great promise. Her voice is suitably light and agile ... She has a lovely sense of when and how to ornament and differentiates well the French and Italian styles. la Jardin Secret's early recording receives top-drawer treatment from CORO, which is exactly what these fine and enterprising artists deserve.' International Record Review

Orazio Michi (1594-1641)
1. Spera mi disse Amore

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704)
2. Ah! Qu'ils sont courts

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) (arranged Sighting)
3. Assez de Pleurs

Pierre Guédron (1564-1619)
4. Aux plaisirs

Lully (arranged for Anglebert)
5. Ritournelle des Fées

Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674)
6. Deh, memoria

Luigi Rossi (1597-1653) (arranged David Blunden)
7. Mio core languisce

Louis Couperin (c.1626 - 1661)
8. Chaconne la Bergeronnette

Lully
9. Deh, piangete - from Psyché

Anon (arranged David Blunden)
10. La chasse donné à Mazarin par les paysans des bourges et des villages sur le tocsin (Mazarinade)

Demachy (d. c.1692)
11.Allemande

Charpentier
12.Tristes déserts

Michelangelo Rossi (c.1601-1656)
13. Toccata Settima

Luigi Rossi
14. Non pianga e non sospiri - from Orfeo

Lully
15. Tranquilles coeurs - from Le Triomphe de L'Amour

Charpentier (arranged David Blunden)
16. Sans frayeur

Marc Antonio Pasqualini (1614-1691)
17. Si ch'io voglio sperare

Anon (arranged David Blunden)
18. Avertissement des enfarinez à Mazarin sur ce qu'il doit craindre (Mazarinade)

Lully
19. Le perfide Renaud me fuit - from Armide

Lully (arranged de Visée)
20. Chaconne des Harlequins

André Campra (1660-1774)
21. Ad un cuore - from L'Europe Galante