Lully: Grand Motets Vol. 1

"While directing his Te Deum in celebration of a successful operation on his king, Louis XIV, Lully accidentally hit his toe with the long staff with which he was beating time: the resulting abscess turned gangrenous and within two months the great composer was dead. It's a macabre, if ironic story, but listening to this marvellous recording of one of his grandest works, it's easy to see why the great Frenchman could have got carried away. Hervé Niquet leads his compact forces (thankfully not the 150 who took art in the fatal 1687 performance) in a reading that finds intimate beauty in the midst of ceremonial bombast, while the exciting Miserere shows itself as the true production of a master dramatist."
- The Scotsman, August 28, 1999

"Spirited performances from the orchestra and mainly reliable contributions from the six vocal soloists."
- Richard Leigh Harris, Birmingham Post, October 1999

"[Niquet] brings declamatory vigour, rhythmic incisiveness and, where the contrast exists, a gentler expressive sensibility to music that is redolent of those gestures typifying Bourbon absolutism during the Grand siècle...A stimulating issue...Once upon a time sacred music of the French Baroque was considered expressively superficial. These idiomatic, often affecting performances argue strongly to the contrary."
- Nicholas Anderson, Classic FM Magazine, October 1999