Home listening - Les Arts Florissants and the Sixteen hit 40

The Guardian 0

Les Arts Flo and the Sixteen celebrate with sparkling 40th anniversary releases. Plus, tales from the riverbank with Petroc Trelawny

• Two international ensembles established in 1979, each playing vital roles in expanding repertoire, have issued 40th anniversary collections. Les Arts Florissants, founded by the American-born French conductor and harpsichordist William Christie, takes its name from Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s 1685 opera of that name. A fluid ensemble of singers, instrumentalists and dancers, Les Arts Flo embraces mainstream Bach and Mozart but is particularly known for its exploration of lesser known baroque composers: Lully, Rameau, Gluck, Charpentier and others. Their three-disc set (Harmonia Mundi), directed by Christie and British tenor/conductor Paul Agnew, is grouped as Music and Theatre, Sacred (the plum of the three, especially worth it for Luigi Rossi’s anguished Un Peccator pentito) and Profane.

• The Sixteen, the much loved British group founded by conductor Harry Christophers and at first best known for early English and European Renaissance polyphony, has a wider embrace. Their double-album compilation (Coro) confirms that variety, fresh and vital in every track, from Palestrina and Monteverdi to Poulenc, Stravinsky, Morten Lauridsen and Howard Skempton. It’s the ideal playlist for anyone wanting to sample the possibilities of choral music, wonderfully sung (and in some cases played, with the Orchestra of the Sixteen).