After the events of 1789, François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829) became an ardent musical icon of the revolution: Le Triomphe de la République (1793) is a single-act lyric divertissement, written to glorify the victory of the Republic’s army over anti-French troops led by the Duke of Brunswick at the battle of Valmy on September 20, 1792. In his informative essay, Carlo Piccardi explains that ‘emerging from the houses of the aristocracy and the theatres into the wide-open public spaces, music was undergoing a radical change that was itself revolutionary’.

Diego Fasolis, the Swiss Radio Choir and the excellent I Barocchisti here provide a good account of Gossec’s fervent piece of propaganda. The militant overture has sharp attack, bold brass and booming drums. The choruses ‘Dieu du peuple’ and ‘Malheur au despotisme’ bring to mind the kind of French revolutionary songs that Beethoven reflected in his symphonies. Salomé Haller and Makato Sakurada sing their solos with conviction and pleasing timbres (the latter’s ‘Les habitans’ is an elegantly orchestrated folk dance that seems like a curious compound between Gluck and Offenbach). There is little profound beauty or drama but Gossec’s music can be spectacularly vivid: the warlike ‘Dans le temps’ has cannon-fire drums and military trumpets woven into its fabric. The best moment is the concluding masque of internationally flavoured dances representing the English, Swiss, Poles, Spanish and Africans lining up to acknowledge how marvellous the French are. Playing with different orchestral styles and colours seems to free Gossec from the yoke of politics enough for him to show what he is really capable of.