For her first recital with Harmonia Mundi, Gabrielle Rubio invites listeners to discover the early French composers who, from the late seventeenth to the eighteenth century, established the transverse flute as a noble solo instrument. Fascinated by this repertoire from an early age, she reveals all its poetry: music poised between dance, reverie and chiaroscuro, where a subtle art of nuance and expression comes to life.
La Traversière
Gabrielle Rubio • Lukas Schneider • Thibaut Roussel • Cécile Chartrain
Michel de la Barre, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Pierre Danican Philidor… These names mark the emergence of an intimate and deeply expressive musical language: that of the French transverse flute at the dawn of the eighteenth century.
Supported by Gabrielle Rubio through Lab'baroque, the CMBV’s mentoring programme for emerging artists specialising in French Baroque music, this recording is the culmination of extensive research and exploration of the French repertoire for traverso and basso continuo, serving a distinctive artistic vision.
This recording offers an immersion into a rare sound world, where refinement, poetry and musical eloquence converge. The featured composers—including Michel de la Barre, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre and Pierre Danican Philidor, all Musiciens de la Chambre du Roy under Louis XIV—shaped an aesthetic of sensibility in which every note seems intended to speak directly to the listener. Conceived as a musical journey, the programme places these pioneering works of the French flute repertoire alongside those of Michel Blavet and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, illustrating the evolution towards the style galant during the Regency and the reign of Louis XV. In the space of just a few decades, an entire musical world was transformed, moving from expressive chiaroscuro to a brighter, more virtuosic and seductive style.