Barricades

Evoking the grandeur and refinement of the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV, Barricades takes its name from a celebrated keyboard piece by François Couperin. The music of Couperin, Marais, Rameau and others is performed by harpsichordist Jean Rondeau and lutenist Thomas Dunford, who are joined by Myriam Rignol on viola da gamba and by singers Lea Desandre and Marc Mauillon.

The New York Times has called Barricades "the perfect album for the hot, lazy summer days ... an assured yet probing collection of French Baroque music ... Full of dreamy repetitions and dazzling changes, and played with a combination of alert precision and dancey, low-slung freedom."

"Our playing goes far beyond dialogue," says harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, describing his partnership with lutenist Thomas Dunford. "We brood over this music, we play it endlessly ... and that is precisely what we do in this programme composed almost exclusively of rondos - pieces structured as refrain-verse-refrain-verse - and of pieces with repeats in binary form."

It seems appropriate that the French term for a rondo is rondeau. One of the most famous rondeaux of the 18th century is Les Baricades mistérieuses by François Couperin. An intricate, gently hypnotic piece, it is also enigmatic: scholars continue to debate the true nature of those 'barricades' in the title. Are they literal or figurative, or maybe both?

All the composers who feature on Barricades were associated with the court at Versailles. Couperin is joined by Marin Marais, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Robert de Visée, Michel Lambert, Jean-Henry D'Anglebert and Antoine Forqueray.