The Hammock Papers: Niquet

Showing posts with label Niquet. Show all posts

23 November 2025

Vivaldi, Magnificat, RV 610

Hervé Niquet guides Le Concert Spirituel ...

10 July 2025

Handel, Water Music Suite No.2, HWV 349

Hervé Niquet at the helm of Le Concert Spirituel ...

01 July 2025

Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Herve Niquet having the time of his life directing Le Concert Spirituel ...

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

Anne Sexton

Remember, reflect, and be exuberant this week.

21 April 2024

Charpentier, Te Deum, H.146

Hervé Niquet puts Le Concert Spirituel through their paces ...

23 February 2024

Happy Birthday, Handel

Mercier, George Frederick Handel, 1730

In 1743, following the first London performance of his masterpiece, Messiah, a friend congratulated Handel (born on this day in 1685) on the excellent “entertainment” he had provided the audience.

“My Lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them,” Handel humbly replied. “I wish to make them better.”

Herve Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel improves us in two minutes, blasting through some Coronation Anthems ...

20 July 2023

Published.

Handel, Water Music Suite No. 1, HWV 348: Overture, 1717

George Frideric Handel published his Water Music Suites on this day in 1717.

Hervé Niquet conducts Le Concert Spirituel ...

06 November 2022

In a program titled Gounod Gothique, Herve Niqet conducts the Flemish Radio Choir, with organist François Saint-Yves, featuring a selection of sacred transcriptions of the works of Palestrina, Bach, Mozart and Handel ...

24 February 2022

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

23 February 2022

Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Denner, George Frideric Handel (detail), 1728

George Frideric Handel was born on this day in 1685.

Hervé Niquet conducts Le Concert Spirituel in a performance of the Music for the Royal Fireworks ...

23 February 2021

Happy Birthday, Handel

Hudson, George Frideric Handel, 1748

George Frideric Handel was born on this day 1685.

Hervé Niquet rocks out loud, as the sixth-graders would say, with Le Concert Spirituel in a performance of the Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351, at the park of Chambord Castle ...

17 August 2020

Charpentier, First and Second March for Trumpets/Prelude to Te Deum

Hervé Niquet conducts the Croatian Baroque Ensemble ...

17 July 2020

Premiered.

George Frideric Handel's suite Water Music premiered on this date in 1717.

Hervé Niquet dances through it with Le Concert Spirituel ...

04 July 2020

Handel, Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Hervé Niquet conducts Le Concert Spirituel ...

27 April 2020

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Premiered.

Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks premiered on this date in 1749.

Kick the tires and light the fires as Herve Niquet conducts Le Concert Spirituel ...

16 April 2020

Charpentier, Marches for the Trumpets/Prelude to Te Deum in D major, H. 146

Hervé Niquet driving Le Concert Spirituel ...

If you're gonna kick ass, you better have a kick-ass band (and jacket).

14 April 2020

Handel, Water Music, Suite II, HWV 349

Le Concert Spirituel, conducted by Hervé Niquet, kicks the tires and lights the fires performing the Hornpipe ...

07 February 2020

Handel, Water Music Suite No. 1, HWV 348

Herve Niquet drivin' the Le Concert Spirituel bus ...

24 November 2019

Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno

Hervé Niquet leads Le Concert Spirituel ...

23 February 2019

Happy Birthday, Handel.

Dener, George Frideric Handel, 1728

George Frideric Handel was born on this day in 1685.

I should be sorry if I only entertained them, I wish to make them better.

George Frideric Handel

Hervé Niquet enthusiastically leads Le Concert Spirituel in Suite No. 2 in D Major, HMV 349, from Water Music ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."