Posted on 2 August 2016
Containing world premiere recordings of Darius Milhaud's Deux poèmes (1919) and Jean Francaix's 12-voice Ode à la gastronomie, the CD also includes a passionate account of the rarely-heard masterpiece Les Cantiques des Cantiques by Daniel-Lesur (1953) and other works by Poulenc, Satie and Ravel. In an exciting move for the music department, the Lesur was sung by a combination of I Fagiolini and eight advanced undergraduate and graduate students from the department.
Robert Hollingworth comments:
"This represents a significant departure from our previous recordings of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, but is music we feel a strong, francophile passion towards. As with all our recent recordings, we have found works outside the normal recording canon.”
The headline premiere is a previously untouched meal by Jean Francaix, a louche and humorous satire on the French attitude to dining, based on Brillat-Savarin's famous 1825 bible about food La physiologie du gout. To help the non-French understand a piece which seem totally out of synch with today's fast-moving society, I Fagiolini shot a film conceived by Hollingworth and collaborator John La Bouchardiere (director of previous Fagiolini projects The Full Monteverdi and Betrayal - a polyphonic crime drama).
The full track listing for the disc is: