This anthology traverses 150 years of the air de cour repertory, from its beginnings in the ‘Parisian’ chanson to the time of Francois Couperin. So it is probably the most comprehensive survey of the genre, and it certainly bids fair to be one of the finest. Fouchecourt chooses wisely and well: the earlier repertory has been fairly well served, but much of what he offers is new to me, on record at least. His light tenor is well known from the opera repertoire, but he manages just fine on his own. The opening ‘Tant que vivray’ seems rather low-pitched for his voice, but the following pieces allow him to stretch his vocal chords languorously, wittily or eloquently in turns.
His lyricism speaks for itself, but the drinking song Amis environs nous is robust and suitably breathless, and his portrayal of the hapless protagonist in ‘Un satire cornu’ has irony tinged with compassion. Is it that Fouchecourt is French? No disrespect intended to Nigel Rogers, Charles Daniels and other fine practitioners of the genre, but the Gallic ease with which Fouchecourt characterises these different situations is quite distinctive. And it could only occur to a Frenchman to connect this genre to the modern song-writer Georges Brassens, whose (slightly revised) setting of a text by Corneille nicely divides the programme into two halves. The later period is, if anything, more limited and conventionalised in its expressive scope (despite the increased instrumentation), but Fouchecourt’s sense of line and ornamentation keep things moving along.
I have a soft spot for the air de cour, and though the next Critic’s Choice is some way off, I reckon this will make it.'