Cantatas for a mysterious flautist
22 May 2025/ France / Marcq-en-Barœul
Between August and November 1724, Bach was able to count on the presence of a quite exceptional flautist, whose identity remains a mystery unless it was the Frenchman Buffardin who signed the score with an ‘si vous plait’... For him, Bach wrote week after week, parts of a level of difficulty and depth of inspiration never equalled before or after those 4 months!
It is to this period of Bach's life that Alexis Kossenko, virtuoso flautist and musical director of Les Ambassadeurs ~ La Grande Ecurie, would like to take you. A meeting with this prestigious guest for whom virtuoso, acrobatic but also tormented parts were written beyond the joyous lightness or meditation usually reserved for the sound of the flute.
The fruit of 15 years' research by Alexis Kossenko, the ensemble is offering a series of concerts based on 12 cantatas born of a combination of circumstances. It is part of the project to complete the cantatas in their historical versions, initiated in 2022.
‘Convinced that each of these pages is a musical miracle and that it deserves to be heard by everyone, understood, tasted and retained, I have conceived the somewhat crazy project of travelling through and exploring all these works; I am driven by the feeling that this is a pilgrimage that I must accomplish, without which my musical and spiritual life would be very incomplete...’. - Alexis Kossenko
It is to this period of Bach's life that Alexis Kossenko, virtuoso flautist and musical director of Les Ambassadeurs ~ La Grande Ecurie, would like to take you. A meeting with this prestigious guest for whom virtuoso, acrobatic but also tormented parts were written beyond the joyous lightness or meditation usually reserved for the sound of the flute.
The fruit of 15 years' research by Alexis Kossenko, the ensemble is offering a series of concerts based on 12 cantatas born of a combination of circumstances. It is part of the project to complete the cantatas in their historical versions, initiated in 2022.
‘Convinced that each of these pages is a musical miracle and that it deserves to be heard by everyone, understood, tasted and retained, I have conceived the somewhat crazy project of travelling through and exploring all these works; I am driven by the feeling that this is a pilgrimage that I must accomplish, without which my musical and spiritual life would be very incomplete...’. - Alexis Kossenko
