The angle of this CD is that it’s a kind of early birthday party for the inimitable William Christie, who celebrates 80 years not long after it releases. He’s done such incredible work for early music over the years, and this disc celebrates him by bringing together several of the players he’s been working with in recent years in a feast of French Baroque chamber music.

The programming is absolutely meticulous, ebbing and flowing in instrumentation and mood. Myriam Rignol’s bass viol gets quite a number of solo pieces that join the dots between larger works (incidentally, her viol is the very same 17th-century instrument played by Jordi Savall back in the ‘70s), so we hear some gorgeous solo viol from Rignol, before there’s some Charpentier for four, which then flows into a fantastically chunky Couperin musette from Christie himself. 

More solo viol dials things back, before Théotime Langlois de Swarte steps forward as violin soloist in a nuanced and intimate performance of a Jean-Baptiste Senaillé sonata. It might sound complicated on paper, but it flows seamlessly as you’re listening...