Modern ensembles have always tended to shy away from the French baroque repertory—Lully, Couperin and Rameau for example—because of its rarified preciosity and the intricacy of the performing lore. Only harpsichordists, privy to French ornamentation practices, have made it their speciality. With familiarity, much of the mystique has now dissolved. But the music remains to a certain extent the provenance of the specialist so that even ensembles known, along with their conductors, for their stylish performances of Italian and German baroque music, stumble when they attempt the French.
The English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner offer here orchestrated interpretations of the most extended and quasi-dramatic of Francois Couperin's uniquely conceived chamber music. The pieces within the Apotheose works, descriptively titled and programmatic, lend themselves to varied instrumentation. The Concert ''dans le gout theatral'', published in a score of two and three parts, is transcribed here for larger forces by Peter Holman, who puts forward the novel notion—ostensibly because of the length of the work, the exceptional presence of an ouverture and the absence of dances associated with chamber music (allemandes, courantes, etc.)—that it may be a ''domestic version'' of a hypothetical lost stage work, of which we otherwise have none from Couperin.
The players produce their usual precision and immaculate intonation. But I have to say that these performances are gravely misjudged. The tempos are uncertainly chosen and the movements that are slow are lacking in forward direction: I refer in particular to the exquisite first and third movements—surely some of the most original music Couperin ever wrote—of L'apotheose de Corelli, here sapped of its harmonic tension and expressive rhetoric; the Grand Ritournele of the Concert and the opening piece, the gravement of the Sonade en Trio and the rondement (which even seems to slow down!) of L'apotheose de Lully. The responsibility for shaping each movement—giving it coherence—is clearly Gardiner's; but given his tempos, the continuo players (the viol player Richard Campbell and harpsichordist Alastair Ross) would have done better to provide steadier rhythms and be less accommodating (hear for example the wobbily walking bass in Lully's arrival on Parnassus). Elsewhere, haste and an odd aggressiveness created by exaggerated articulation spoil quick movements like three of the airs in the Concert.
The sum effect of their approach is that the subtle and suggestive French baroque style is reduced to a series of otiose, precious cliches: the insinuating appoggiaturas that mar the rhythm of the Sarabande and the tiresome swells and stress on the first of each group of quavers in the Air tendre of the Concert. A few swollen downbeats might have found a useful place in the ''Descent d'Apollon'' in L'apotheose de Lully, though such is their predictability in the ''Remerciment de Lulli: a Apollon'' that they seem merely affected rather than programmatic.
But the most distressing aspect of performing practice here is inegalite. Were Robert Donington, its untiring advocate, still alive, he would no doubt have found a kinder way to put it, but he would surely have agreed that these players appear to have no notion of when it is appropriate and when not. As Couperin himself wrote more about the subject than any other French composer, they would not have had to look far; their use of it in the Air noblement of the Concert transgresses almost every one of his basic precepts. Its application in the Corelli apotheose, in a reveilli and Corelli's solo (the whole point is its Italianate character), is at best perverse. Fortunately, other, far superior recordings of these works do exist.'