Routes du café: BACH Coffee Cantata + BERNIER, MARAIS, LOCKE

Hana Blazikova, Reynoud van Mechele, Lesandre Abadie
Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin

01. Nâyi Osman Dede Taksim Ney 2:37
02. Nâyi Osman Dede Rast Dilârâ Peşrev 1:14
Nicolas Bernier Le Caffé: (Hana Blažíková – soprano)
03. I. Prélude 1:31
04. II. Récitatif 0:42
05. III. Air 4:56
06. IV. Récitatif 0:55
07. V. Air gay 4:23
08. VI. Récitatif 0:29
09. VII. Air gay 5:16

10. Nâyi Osman Dede Taksim Oud 1:09
11. Nâyi Osman Dede Rast Dilârâ Saz Semâî 4:12
12. Nâyi Osman Dede Taksim Ney II 0:54

13. Marin Marais Troisième livre de viole: Saillie du café 2:28
14. Kathleen Kajioka Taksim Kaman 2:39
15. Kathleen Kajioka Wahda Sarabande 3:51
16. Matthew Locke Consort of Fower Parts: Fantasia in D Minor 4:49
17. Tanburi Cemil Bey Taksim & Mahur Peşrev 3:47

18-27. Johann Sebastian Bach Coffee Cantata “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht”, BWV 211:

Reinoud Van Mechelen – tenor, Hana Blažíková – soprano, Lisandro Abadie – bass,

Ensemble Masques, Olivier Fortin

Label Alpha Classics
Catalogue No ALPHA543
Barcode 3760014195433
Released: 20 September 2019
Duration 71min

The history of coffee is fascinating! From the opening of the first establishments in Constantinople in the middle of the sixteenth century to the appearance and diffusion of the drink in Europe in the following century, coffee and coffee houses were highly fashionable. Two composers devoted a cantata to the topic. Gottfried Zimmermann opened his famous coffee house in Leipzig in 1715 and organised concerts there. Around 1735, Bach composed his famous cantata Schweigt still, plaudert nicht , which was probably performed there. It depicts the humorous dispute between a father and his daughter over her consumption of coffee. In Paris, Nicolas Bernier’s cantata Le Caffé (1664-1734) praised the beverage and its many virtues. The ‘Coffee Road’ Olivier Fortin has mapped out here makes a detour to London around 1660, where the composer Matthew Locke frequented the Turk’s Head Coffee House and promoted a string fantasia.

Fortin has chosen to organise this album like a fasil, a ‘suite of pieces’ in traditional Ottoman music, with taqsims (improvisations) interspersed among the compositions and played on such instruments as the ney flute, the Arab violin and the yayli tanbur.

Gramophone Magazine wrote in November 2019:
The playing of Ensemble Masques is suitably lip-smacking, Anna Besson’s flute nicely in the foreground sharing the limelight with Hana Blažíková’s pert soprano in Bernier’s frothy cantata…The Turkish numbers percolate vivid oriental colour…Imaginatively programmed, beautifully played and recorded, this is disc is as delightful as a cup of the black gold itself.