Barricades

Harpsichordist Jean Rondeau and archlutenist Thomas Dunford share their equal delight in the hypnotic repetitions of the French rondeau—a musical form where themes return again and again, each time embellished anew. Barricades showcases some of the most exquisite and seductive French music of the 17th and 18th centuries—Rondeau and Dunford, whose intertwining instruments enrich one another, revelling in the finest variations and subtlest of harmonic changes with each reprise. Whether in the unaffected beauty of Couperin, the grand statements of Louis XIV’s lutenist De Visée, the sighing falls of the great Rameau or the sophisticated world of D’Anglebert, Rondeau and Dunford are in perfect musical sympathy.