This album owes its title to Georg Philipp Telemann, who described the music he discovered during a trip to Upper Silesia in 1705 as existing “in its true barbaric beauty.” The composer was fascinated: “An attentive observer could gather from [those musicians] enough ideas in eight days to last a lifetime.” François Lazarevitch, the founder and conductor of Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, is an equally passionate admirer of folk music whose Serbian roots link him to these cultures. With the help of a collection of dance tunes from 1730 that he unearthed, Lazarevitch conceived this multi-faceted program mixing Telemann’s Concerto Polonois with eastern European Romani music of the eighteenth century.
Beauté Barbare: Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch
