In addition to the artistry it has imposed on the arts, the Baroque era was an impassioned, bubbling cauldron which shook Europe by forming interactions around the entire continent. Different creative paths crossed and recrossed propagating a positive epidemic of good sense and spirit. This incessant coming and going between people and musicians is exploited by French ensemble Ground Floor who have given themselves the mission of bringing back music’s transformative and interrogative strength through works conceived in basso continuo, the beating heart of a human voice and, like in this album, a reigning violin at an English court personified here by the violinist Alice Julien-Laferrière.
Neapolitan composer and violinist Nicolas Matteis arrived in England when the newly anointed king wished to imitate the royal chapel of Louis XIV in Versailles. The violin was then entirely new in the United Kingdom where the consort of viols still reigned supreme. It is this transitional period which is evoked in this work with Matteis’ latin music as he invents his own “genio inglese” inspired by popular dances, from music heard in salons to this varied nature that the Neapolitan discovered through traversing, as he says, Europe on foot. As the musicians themselves put it, this work can act as an antidote to Brexit while being a declaration of admiration for Great Britain. © François Hudry/Qobuz