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Jean-François Paillard leads his chamber orchestra in this reference recording of Couperin's "Les Nations". "Les Nations" is a vast project in which the virtues of both the French and Italian styles are set next to each other. Each of the four ordres celebrates a Catholic power of Europe – France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Savoy dynasty of Piedmont – and each is a combination of an Italianate trio sonata with its free-form virtuosity and a large-scale and elaborate French dance suite. French conductor Jean-François Paillard was born in Vitry-le-François and received his musical training at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he won first prize in music history, and the Salzburg Mozarteum. He also earned a degree in mathematics at the Sorbonne. In 1953, he founded the Jean-Marie Leclair Instrumental Ensemble, which later became the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra in 1959. The ensemble has made recordings of much of the Baroque repertoire for Erato Records and has toured throughout Europe and the United States. It has also recorded with many leading French instrumentalists, including Maurice André, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Pierre Pierlot, Lily Laskine. Jean-François Paillard and his Chamber Orchestra nearly single-handedly brought Pachebel's Canon from obscurity to great renown with their 1968 recording with Erato Records.