Le Poème Harmonique, a group of soloists who came together in 1998 under the direction of Vincent Dumestre, centers its artistic activity on music of the seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.

The group’s vocal and instrumental interpretations are enriched by other disciplines, with actors and dancers joining its singers and musicians in programs of chamber works – Le Ballet des Fées, Il Fasolo – and, since 2004, in large-scale stage productions, such as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a comédie-ballet by Molière and Lully (stage director Benjamin Lazar) and Baroque Carnival (directed by Cécile Roussat), an original show combining Italian music with the circus arts (artists trained at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque). For operatic performances as Cadmus et Hermione by Lully (stage director Benjamin Lazar), Le Poème Harmonique studies in depth the correspondences between ‘period’ aesthetics – use of candles for lighting, authentic gestures and, for Cadmus, painted canvases and machinery – and the aesthetics of modern stage productions. Interaction between artistic disciplines and real teamwork – working together as a company – are Le Poème Harmonique’s hallmark in Baroque performance today. The ensemble also returns to the sources of early French and Italian music through exploration of its relationships with traditional or folk music. The recording Aux Marches du Palais, for example, is devoted to French songs of oral tradition.

Since it was founded, Le Poème Harmonique has made many concert tours in Europe and in most of the major European capitals (including a particularly strong relationship with audiences in Rome, New York and Tokyo; London and Vienna debuts in the near future), but the ensemble continues to devote twenty-five percent of its activity to the Haute-Normandie Region. The outstanding events of the past seasons include the exceptional success of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Baroque Carnival and Cadmus et Hermione (almost 130 performances in all of those three productions, at venues including the Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Cité de la Musique in Paris, Opéra de Rouen, Théâtre de Caen, Grand Théâtre - Aix-en-Provence, Arsenal - Metz, Bozar - Brussels, Grand Théâtre - Luxembourg, Utrecht Festival, Teatro Canal - Madrid, Teatro San Carlo - Naples, National Theatre - Prague, Budapest Spring Festival, San Francisco Calperf Festival, and so on). Future stage projects include L’Egisto by Cavalli and Le Malade Imaginaire by Molière and Charpentier, with faithful partners the Opéra Comique in Paris and the Opéra de Rouen.

The ensemble’s recordings for the Alpha label have met with rare public success (over 150,000 CDs and DVDs sold since 1998) and with great critical acclaim; it has received the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, Diapason d’Or (including Best DVD of 2006 for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), recommendations from Opéra International, Classica, Le Monde de la Musique, Prelude Classical Award 2003, Antonio Vivaldi International Award (Cini Foundation, Venice) and the Caecilia Press Prize, to mention just a few. The DVD of Cadmus et Hermione, released at the end of 2008, was also exceptionally well received (Diapason d’Or, Recommended by Classica, BBC Music Choice, German Record Critics’ Award …).

Le Poème Harmonique is subsidised by the French Ministry of Culture (DRAC Haute-Normandie), the Haute-Normandie Region. It works in collaboration with the Research Group of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, and with the Fondation Royaumont, and it is a member of the Federation of Specialized Vocal and Instrumental Ensembles, FEVIS. Mécénat Musical Société Générale is the ensemble’s principal sponsor.

Website: www.lepoemeharmonique.fr

Vincent Dumestre, artistic director

After studying art history at the École du Louvre and classical guitar at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, Vincent Dumestre (b. May 1968) devoted himself to the lute, Baroque guitar and theorbo. He studied those instruments in courses with Hopkinson Smith and Eugène Ferré, and with Rolf Lislevand at the Toulouse Conservatoire (CNR), and in the continuo class at the Boulogne Conservatoire (CNR), where he was unanimously awarded the advanced diploma. Since then he has taken part in many concerts, notably with the Ricercar Consort, La Simphonie du Marais, Le Concert des Nations, La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, Akademia and the ensembles of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. He has participated in more than thirty recordings with most of those ensembles, for the firms Erato, Auvidis, Virgin, Ricercar, Pierre Verany, Naxos, Empreinte Digitale and Fnac Musique.

In 1998 Vincent Dumestre formed Le Poème Harmonique, a chamber ensemble and orchestra specializing in the Baroque repertoire, of which he is the artistic director. From the very first the ensemble’s productions won both critical acclaim and popularity. In 1999 the French music magazine Diapason voted Vincent Dumestre ‘Young Talent of the Year’ for his work with Le Poème Harmonique, whose recordings on the Alpha label are regularly singled out by the music press (Record of the Year Diapason and Le Monde de la Musique, Recommendations from Classica, Répertoire, Opéra International, Télérama, etc.) Vincent Dumestre’s artistic career is essentially bound up with that of his ensemble. It is interesting furthermore to note his unu     sual position on the international Baroque scene, as the only musician to lead a company that is directly involved in the production of large-scale stage productions (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme in 2004, Le Carnaval Baroque in 2006, Cadmus et Hermione in 2008), thus contributing to a new perception of the relationships between music and theatre that has proved immensely popular, acclaimed by the critics (countless awards in France and abroad) and by the public (so far over 100,000 people have seen the three productions, and tens of thousands of DVDs have been sold). The same spirit of innovation characterizes the chamber programs in which Vincent Dumestre continues to take part, as an instrumentalist, with his singers and musicians. This aspect of his work is still of fundamental importance to him, despite the fact that Le Poème Harmonique’s evolution means that he often has the role of conductor.

Over the past four years the repute of Vincent Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique has grown spectacularly and the ensemble’s stage productions and concerts are now presented at the most prestigious venues in France and abroad. These include the Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Cité de la Musique (Paris), the Opéra in Rouen and the Theatre in Caen, the Normandy Autumn Festival, the Royal Opera House (Versailles), Royaumont Abbey, the Ambronay, Beaune and Sablé festivals; the Grand Théâtre (Luxembourg), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Utrecht Festival; Granada and Santiago di Compostela international festivals; Accademia Santa Cecilia (Rome), Teatro San Carlo (Naples); Cologne Philharmonic Hall, Potsdam and Regensburg early music festivals, National Theatre of Prague, Budapest Palace of Arts, Krakow Mysteria Paschalia Festival, St Petersburg Philharmonic Hall; Miller Theater at Columbia University in New York, Boston Early Music Festival, San Francisco Cal Performances Festival; Campos do Jordão Festival (São Paulo); Oji Hall (Tokyo), Forbidden City Hall (Beijing), Concert Hall (Shanghai), to name just a few.

In 2004 Vincent Dumestre was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

“Vincent Dumestre is back with a program that touches heart and soul alike with its pure polyphonies, delicate, inspired ornamentation, its interiorized ductility of musical language, its vocal clarity and skilfully emphasized harmonic friction. Working with an equally inspired Claire Lefilliâtre…, Dumestre has assembled a top-flight group of vocal performers … while his consort of viols is quite simply sublime.”

—Stéphan Perreau, Classica

“This is total art, refined in the extreme, and wonderfully alive.”

—Marie-Aude Roux, Le Monde
(Cadmus et Hermione, Théâtre National de l'Opéra Comique)

“...the audience was simply giving a standing ovation, loud, bright, warm and sincere, to one of the most delightful shows that has been given in an opera house for a long time. A show from which one emerges on cloud nine, and having not missed a single word – which is rare.”

—Gaëtan Naulleau, Diapason
(Cadmus et Hermione, Théâtre National de l'Opéra Comique, Paris)

“Vincent Dumestre, the ensemble’s music director, led his singers and a viol consort with organ and theorbo in a gripping, beautifully shaped account.”

—Allan Kozinn, New York Times
(Lamentations d’Emilio de’ Cavalieri, Miller Theatre, New York)

“And it truly was an event: This congregation of performers was having a spiritual moment onstage, an experience in which we counted ourselves lucky to take part.”

—Olivia Giovetti, TimeOut New York
(Lamentations d’Emilio de’ Cavalieri, Miller Theatre, New York)

“Recorded a month after a thrilling concert giving at the Louis XIII festival at the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles, this CD recaptures the same magic. The spellbinding vocal polyphony and unhurried phrasing of the instruments confirm the virtuosity of the Poème Harmonique...

—Philippe Venturini, Le Monde de la Musique, CHOC
(CD Je Meurs sans mourir)

“Fittingly-named Poème Harmonique! We can only marvel …. Vincent Dumestre and his partners have put together a skillfully crafted program, whose thousand and one details enthrall. The instrumental accompaniment is quite simply exceptional. While the lute and guitar illuminations of Vincent Dumestre can only be compared with the masterworks of the greatest goldsmiths, the consort of viols especially elicits astonishment for its ensemble perfection.… A glowing recording.” (Zurich Tonhalle)

—Répertoire, R10

“... If Belli's astounding music has been so powerfully resurrected it is also thanks to an instrumental performance featuring viols, triple harp, percussion, theorbo and guitar exemplary in its precision and miraculous in its beauty. The most attentive care is lavished on the slightest introduction and we marvel continually, here at a discrete stroke of percussion, there at a figure played on the theorbo.… The sound engineering is dazzlingly natural, showing off every change of timbre and nuance on this remarkable recording.”

—Le Monde de la Musique, CHOC

“...A four-hour performance, almost every minute of it fascinating, a celebration, a challenge taken up with as much skill as pleasure, that resolutely turns its back on dry-as-dust theatrical archaeology.… The band is as tight-knit and multi-skilled as the various art forms are seamlessly entwined in a delightful, subtle, baroque rhetoric…. The singers deserve the utmost praise... Without ever hogging the limelight, Dumestre works himself easily into each of the interludes – one more asset in the harmonious combination of the arts that has helped this Bourgeois Gentilhomme to triumph in Brussels.”

—Michèle Friche, Le Soir (Belgium)
(Palais des Beaux-Arts)

“Four years ago, conductor Vincent Dumestre and stage director Benjamin Lazar brought us a Bourgeois Gentilhomme that revolutionized the approach to the comédie-ballet. They have now done it again at the Opéra-Comique with a staging of Lully's Cadmus et Hermione.… The beauty of the orchestra is impressive, combining as it does viols, theorbos and bagpipes with the strong chorus. The limpid management of space and candlelit staging add to the perfection. Twenty years after Atys by William Christie and Jean-Marie Villégier at this same venue, Cadmus et Hermione is a milestone for its stylistic choices, starting with the use of period French that pronounces the final "e". During a performance lasting two and a quarter hours, the troupe surpasses itself, to the point that we cannot praise the exquisite Hermione – the daughter of Mars and Venus – sung by Claire Lefilliâtre, more than André Morsch's Cadmus, Prince of Tyr, Arnaud Marzorati's Arbas, Isabelle Druet's Charity or the Nurse, sung by counter-tenor Jean-François Lombard.”

—Libération

Le Poème Harmonique at BBC Proms Cadogan Hall

VENEZIA dalle strade ai palazzo -‘From the Streets to the Palaces’

…a celebration by candlelight of Venice in the Golden Age of Baroque, when art music and popular forms came together and mingled, and feelings and freedom of language had not yet been restrained by rules and codes.

…music of Claudio Monteverdi, Biagio Marini, Francesco Manelli and Benedetto Ferrari.

Claire Lefilliâtre, soprano
Jan Van Elsacker, tenor
Serge Goubioud, tenor
Arnaud Marzorati, bass
Johannes Frisch, violin
Lucas Guimaraes, treble and bass viol
Françoise Enock, violone
Joël Grare, percussion
Jean-Luc Tamby, colascione and guitar
Vincent Dumestre, theorbo, baroque guitar and direction
Mise en geste : Benjamin Lazar