By Fabien Armengaud, artistic and musical director of the CMBV Choir School

I spent twenty years at Olivier Schneebeli’s side on the organ and harpsichord, hapilly accompagnying concerts and recordings of the Cmbv’s Choir School, before taking the artistic and musical direction two years ago.
In order to make this playlist, I dove back into all the disks recorded during my years as a continuo player.
Browsing these disks is like leafing through a wonderful album of school photos, it is remembering, at the turn of a recording, such and such a Page or such and such a Chantre one has accompanied musically. It also means listening to all those young soloists again, at the beginning of their careers.
So here are my favourites.
I hope you will enjoy listening to this playlist as much as I enjoyed concocting it.
I hope that, among all these tracks, you will find the one to take to a desert island… And that you will enjoy the show!
Fabien Armengaud

Ah, operas with Olivier Schneebeli, it was quite an adventure!
He who has hesitated for a long time between theatre and music swept us into this balzing world.
Here, Tancred by André Campra.
Only one regret: that we did not record Amadis by Lully which we gave in Avignon…

Messe à Quatre Chœurs
This singular project involving the Messe à Quatre Chœurs by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the creation of an extraordinary piece by Philippe Hersant: Le cantique des trois enfants dans la fournaise and gathering both Radio France Choir and Cmbv’s Choir was an astounding experience which now finds an outcome, and a good one at that, in the Janus project.

André Campra’s requiem, the other famous requiem of the baroque period along with that of Jean Gilles.
The two bars of the serpent at the beginning still move me and this Agnus…

Tarare by Antonio Salieri.
Without transition, as it is customary to say.
First experience of preparing a chorus for an external conductor, and not the least, Christophe Rousset.
What an interesting composer Salieri was, whom I had discovered in my youth thanks to the film Amadeus by Milos Forman!

Ariane et Bacchus
First recording for the Chantres since my appointment at the head of the Cmbv’s choir.
An opportunity to meet Hervé Niquet.
Chantres and Choir of the Concert Spirituel are united to defend this work by one of my favourite composers: Marin Marais.

As a postlude: Molière, Sa Majesté l’acteur, a book-disk with Les Lunaisiens of Arnaud Marzorati and the Pages, directed by Clément Buonomo, which allows us to discover Molière’s youth.