Cabinet Des Delices [CD]

For his Cabinet of Delights, lutenist Eduardo Egüez has compiled a collection of French lute music centred on the composer Franz Philipp Le Sage de Richee. Virtually nothing is known about his life, except that he presumably had to flee France and subsequently found employment in Breslau. However, he occupies a central position in lute music because he brings together various styles and trends of French lute music and already foreshadows the later international style of composers such as Sylvius Leopold Weiss, Corelli, or Handel. His music survives only in his collection Cabinet der Lauten from 1695, from which Egüez performs a suite in B minor. In his preface to this collection, Le Sage de Richee states that he was a pupil of Charles Mouton and acknowledges the influence that the famous masters François Dufaut, Denis Gaultier, and Jan Antonin Losy von Losinthal had on his work. Egüez has also compiled a suite from each of these four French lute masters, thereby offering the listener a wonderful panorama of 17th-century French lute music.