Musique Pour Mazarin! Qui a le coeur a tout
le Jardin Secret

Continuing its work with young artists, CORO has the pleasure of announcing Musique Pour Mazarin! the debut recording by le Jardin Secret, winners of both the first prize and audience prize at the Early Music Network Young Artists Competition 2007.

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

The juxtaposition of French and Italian works on this disc shows clearly the rich selection of music heard at Mazarin’s court in the late 1600s. They demonstrating the stark contrast between the 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 into a resistant French context - contributes a little "piquancy" to the mix! 

On this disc, which includes chansons 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.

le Jardin Secret
COR16060

"This is a remarkably well-thought-out programme, containing very few familiar pieces. Of real historical interest are the two examples of the prolific ‘Mazarinades’… Le Jardin Secret’s harpsichordists is David Blunden, an outstandingly gifted young Australian musician, who storms through the piece with blazing confidence and prodigious technique. 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. Le Jardin Secret’s début recording receives top-drawer treatment from CORO, which is exactly what these fine and enterprising artists deserve."

International Record Review

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