Search - Ensemble Gilles Binchois, Dominique Vellard, Anne-Marie Lablaude :: Binchois: Mon souverain desir - Chansons /Ensemble Gilles Binchois * Vellard

A grateful acknowledgment of Vellard's achievement.

05/15/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This recording is in print. Go to Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, or Amazon France; the links are at the bottom of this page. At Amazon UK search for "Binchois - Songs," at the two other sites search for "Mon Souverain Desir." .... All have many song samples. This CD is priceless, one of the great performances by one of the best early music vocal groups. It is recommended by Gramophone in its 2001 Good CD Guide and received the highest marks from Goldberg, Diapason, Monde de la Musique, and Repertoire magazines, as well as a Cannes Classical Award in 1999.A life's worth of beauty and grace is in this CD. At first the music and the performance may seem distant and cold. But, like a spring thaw, time spent listening to this album will slowly reveal a new world, profound and vivid. Ensemble Gilles Binchois employ none of the tastelessly showy gestures some other groups have satisfied themselves with, here this group has moved beyond mere performance. And once this music is allowed its own voice, itself lacking a meretricious note, it is unforgettable. The list of 15th Century chanson composers is long and distinguished, and includes Dufay (Binchois' contemporary), Ockeghem (possibly the student of Binchois), and Busnois. Binchois is at the head of this list, the ideal mirror of a perfected courtly culture. How right that Dominique Vellard should name his ensemble after Binchois! This perfect match has given these songs the wings to escape their time and the composer's mortality."

For those seeking Courtly Love....

Grant Colburn | Green Bay, WI | 06/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a beautiful CD wonderful for anyone exploring the music of 15th century Europe and the Burgundian court. It mixes up full ensemble singing with instrumental music and accompanied solo songs. Rich, dark, and mysterious, this music deserves to be better known and appreciated both by the classical music listener and the more recent participants in Renaissance Faires. The true music of the age continues to put most current "Ren" musicians to shame. Buy this disk and let the period envelope you in its beauty!"

Love-sick Lyrics, Hauntingly Beautiful Recording

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 04/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Gilles de Bins, known as Binchois (c. 1400 - 1460): Mon souverain désir. 17 Chansons. Performed by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois (Anne-Marie Lablaude, soprano; Lena-Susanne Norin, mezzo-soprano; Akira Tachikawa, countertenor; Dominique Vellard, tenor and lute; Emmanuel Bonnardot, baritone and fiddle; Pierre Hamon, recorder, flute and drums; Randall Cook, fiddle and rebec; Jan Walters, harp; Miriam Andersen, harp). Recorded at Grancey-le-Chateau, France, in October 1996 and May 1997. Originally released in 1997 as Virgin Veritas 7243 5 45285 2 1. Total time: 60'27".



At the time of writing, this CD appears to have been withdrawn from the EMI catalogue, but it has been re-issued in Europe together with Songs by Jehan Lescurel on Virgin's Veritas x 2 budget label, unfortunately without the learned introductory notes and the texts of the songs. My recommendation would be to try and get hold of a second-hand copy of the original production with the booklet, this being to my mind much more satisfying.



The first half of the fifteenth century was dominated by composers from the Low Countries, and two names in particular achieved special fame: Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois. But while the more extroverted Dufay has been well-served by the recording industry, it was many years before a disc devoted to Binchois appeared - although, as David Fallows points out in his notes, it seems that Binchois was at least as popular in his day, his only disadvantages being the fact that he never went to Italy, where most manuscripts have survived, and that his musical production is more introverted. His works can be fairly neatly divided into sacred and secular, and this CD by the brilliant French Ensemble Gilles Binchois (not to be confused with the British Binchois Consort led by Andrew Kirkman) brings together, for the first time as far as I can make out, a collection of 17 of Binchois's secular songs, all of which can be characterized as sad and love-sick (although the last of the 17, "Filles a marier", has been correctly described as "rumbustious", a colloquial expression meaning "boisterous" or "uproarious"). The texts are by various authors, some of whom are known, others are anonymous - possibly Binchois wrote some of them himself. All these songs are in three parts, the highest voice carrying the melody, the other two balancing it contrapuntally or being used to modulate the rhythm. Purists will probably expect vocal performances without instruments (such as on some of the Hyperion CDs by Christopher Page's Gothic Voices), but Dominique Vellard has opted not only for instrumental accompaniments for most of the songs, but even has tracks 3, 7, 11 and 13 played on instruments only, whereas track 15 is divided into two sections, the first vocal, the second instrumental. The internet offers a number of learned essays discussing the pros and cons of this decision, and if you are interested, I suggest using a search engine for study.



But that is just the mechanics. The soul of this CD is the absolutely stunningly beautiful performance by an ensemble that really deserves the name. The voices here are incredibly fitting: there is no "showiness" whatsoever, just a peaceful and graceful flowing, allowing the texts and the mellifluous melodies to speak to the heart. Anne-Marie Lablaude has a delightful vibrato-less soprano, but I also enjoyed the androgynous sweetness of Lena-Susanne Norin's dark mezzo and of Akira Tachikawa's faultless countertenor, which could not be further from the falsetto "crowing" to be heard on some 1980s recordings. Dominique Vellard and Emmanuel Bonnardot have worked together on numberless projects over many years, and their singing and playing harmonises perfectly. Of the instrumentalists, it is Pierre Hamon with his superb recorder and flute who sticks out, and he has a number of opportunities to shine here, including a couple of numbers ("Je me recommande") where he can thrash his "tambour" to his heart's desire.



The booklet is superb, but I made out a couple of errors in the listings. "Adieu mes tres belles" (track 7) is performed by Pierre Hamon solo and not vocally, as the track-listing claims.



As with all the Pere Casulleras recordings that I know about, the engineering and sound is absolutely beyond reproach, making this a recording to savour. And, indeed, the reason I bought it was that it was accorded "Recommendation of the Month" status in the German-language "Klassik heute" magazine (July, 1998). I can only underline the enthusiastic encomiums of the critic there - and lament the policy of EMI/Virgin of allowing such great recordings to go out of print within a few years.



Note: In track 4 "En regardant", Dominique Vellard is accompanied by Miriam Andersén on the harp. When I first heard this, I thought there must be another instrument (dulcian?) playing along, too. But Ms. Andersén has informed me that she was using a special technique to produce this "brassy" sound, something that I did not, frankly, know was possible. But listening again on high-end earspeakers, it was obvious that she was right. I stand corrected."