The orchestral disc Delalande (1657-1726) by Vincent Dumestre was one of our CDs of the year 2021. Here is the sacred side. The “Grand Motet” is to French religious music under Louis XIV what the cantata is to Bach. Charpentier, Du Mont, Lully, Delalande produced in abundance for the Royal Chapel these works for choir and large orchestra. This disc brings together the Dies Irae S31 (1690), the Miserere S27 (1687) and the Veni Creator S14 (1684), the first two in newly published editions. We will compare with great interest this Dies Irae introspective, often distributed to solo voices, with that of Lully (1683) recorded by Leonardo García Alarcón for Alpha. This CD is more than welcome, because the Of profundis S23 has almost engulfed the attention paid to Delalande’s sacred production. In the Dies Iraeand the Miserere, Sébastien Daucé raises, without ever forcing the dose, the weight of the human condition, where it would have been so easy to bet on the splendor of Versailles. He thus introduces a collected, impressive modesty.
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