Playlist by Gabrielle Rubio, flutist and theorbist supported by the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles.

For this month's playlist release, the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles has given carte blanche to flutist and theorbist Gabrielle Rubio. Gabrielle shares her favourites and sources of inspiration for her recording project, which focuses on French composers and flautists.

‘The aesthetics of the transverse flute in the Baroque period are very often correlated in people's minds with gallantry, sweetness and cajolery... The French music CD project that I am undertaking in this new year 2025 aims to tell the story of a period that was hardly earlier, but whose aesthetics diverge from this preconceived idea. 

It is an aesthetic of the intimate, the sublime, of musical poetry in all its finesse and eloquence. It was the time of François Couperin, Marin Marais, Forqueray, Robert de Visée…

Their flute counterparts can be found in the music of Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Michel de la Barre, André-Danican Philidor…

Some of these works were written a little later, in the early stages of the galant style, which is indeed very present in the works dedicated to the transverse flute, but I felt it was important to trace a correlation between this instrumental repertoire for harpsichord, viola da gamba and theorbo and that of the early French transverse flute school, which expresses the sensitivity and musical refinement of an era. 

This playlist is therefore deliberately intended to be a playlist of instrumental music, highlighting those instrumental composers who developed the expressive characteristics of their instrument towards an ideal of interiority, refinement and poetry. A few exceptions have obviously slipped in, just for the pleasure of discovering or rediscovering them.’