Plaudits to violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and his Le Consort colleague, harpsichordist Justin Taylor, and Alpha Classics for this truly commanding documentation of 18th-century French music...the album takes us on an enchanting journey through repertoire which to many will be unfamiliar...This is unmissable listening.

This is, above all, dignified and lyrical music that is possessed of a sober and somewhat grave beauty. Théotime Langlois de Swarte plays it with attractive fullness of tone and shapes its phrases gracefully.

Musically, they are brothers: there is such affinity in the way they explore harmony and touch, line and colour – together they conjure the sense that they are trying to spell out a language that only has beautiful words in it.

Listen to this blind and you'd swear there were at least a couple more players involved in several of works on this terrific survey of music by the Francœur brothers and friends (Jean-Jacques-Baptiste Anet, Jean Durocher and François Rebel, to be precise): the two musicians literally conjure up a storm in an excerpt from Les Augustales which yields nothing to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and there are moments in the Anet where Langlois de Swarte imitates a theorbo with uncanny accuracy.