As Jean-Marc Andrieu presses ahead with the rediscovery of Antoine Blanchard’s works which he began thirty years ago, he has ably performed this mission — indeed, it is a joyful way of “doing justice” to his compositions! The three motets à grand chœur showcased herein – two of which have been recorded for the first time – are amongst those religious works representative of the music of Louis XV’s Chapel in the middle of the Eighteenth Century. They make a most pleasant addition to our knowledge about the musician.

This recording is a discovery of Alessandro Scarlatti’s heretofore unknown sacred music, where Renaissance tradition meets Baroque sensibility for a unique and compelling recording. At the core of Odhecaton’s latest offering is the Missa defunctorum for four voices and basso continuo. It is in this magnificent score – recorded for the first time using the critical edition of Luca Della Libera – that primarily contrapuntal writing gives way to Scarlatti’s stylistic choices of great expressivity and rhetorical force, such as in the case of the astonishing Lacrimosa.

“With these arias by Vivaldi and his lesser-known contemporaries I am hoping both to capture the musical tastes of Venice in the early 18th century and to recreate the moods and colours of a city that was open to the world. Venice was one of Europe’s most important musical centres, both exporting its operatic glories and importing new ideas from Rome and Naples.”

The Quatuor Ebène turns to Mendelssohn: two quartets by Felix and one by his elder sister Fanny, who composed over 400 works and who, like her brother, died in 1847. “Felix’s quartets speak with intimacy, but are not devoid of violent, stormy emotion,” says Raphaël Merlin of the Quatuor Ebène. He praises Fanny for composing “with surprising freedom”, saying “we fell in love with her string quartet”.