Dazzling as the Queen of the Night, deeply moving in Lucia di Lammermoor and La Sonnambula, Natalie Dessay also made her mark on the operatic stage in the roles of Olympia, Manon, Musetta and Cleopatra. After training at the Atelier Lyrique de l'Opera National de Paris and pursuing an international operatic career, Natalie Dessay decided to devote herself to spoken theatre, chansons and the song repertory. The duo she formed in 2011 with her artistic partner Philippe Cassard has given one hundred and thirty-five performances around the world, completely reinventing the song recital as a unique moment of expression, embodiment and shared emotion. Ten years after her last appearance at the Opera Bastille in La Fille du regiment, she has chosen to give her farewell performance on the stage of the Palais Garnier on 31 March 2025. This is the last album from this legendary duo, a fitting way to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of one of the greatest sopranos of her generation.
Gilles Binchois (ca 1400-1460), was one of the most eminent composers of the early Renaissance. Highly esteemed by his fellows, Binchois left a lasting legacy, notably through his polyphonic chansons and sacred works, although these remain unfamiliar to the general public. This selection of works by Binchois, born in Hainault, shows the evolution of his musical language from the beginnings of the burgundian style to the later instrumental transcriptions of some of his works, as these bear witness to the timeless beauty of his melodies and harmonic structures.
French lutenist Florent Marie presents his second solo album on Carpe Diem Records: A collection of Renaissance lute music by the famous John Dowland. Recorded in a small church in the normannic countryside, this album features both melancholic and more uplifting compositions of the great English master of the lute, creating an emotional and colorful rendering of these mostly well-known and loved pieces.
Arcadelt: Missa Noe Noe / Namur Chamber Choir, Cappella Mediterranea
Ricercar
CD
$20.99Oct 06, 2023
Given that not one of the Masses by Jacques Arcadelt was included in our boxed set that revealed his immense musical personality to the world, we now remedy this situation with an indispensable addition. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon chose the Missa Noe Noe, which is presented here in the context of the Christmas liturgy. We have also included motets not only by Arcadelt but also by Josquin Desprez, as he was the great model for musicians of his generation. The recording ends resoundingly with Josquin’s imposing Benedicta es coelorum regina for six voices, although in an expanded version for twelve voices by Jean Guyot de Châtelet (1512 – 1588): another Walloon composer to be discovered!
When baritone Milan Siljanov decided to record his first song album, the composers to be immortalised on it were immediately clear to him. Even in his early youth, he had the desire to become a pianist, even though he realised early on that his talents lay in other musical areas. But it was during this time that he first came into contact with Schubert's piano works, in particular the Impromptu No. 4 in A flat major - a piano piece that still fascinates him to this day. The singer also finds the melancholy and pathos of the music in many of Schubert's songs. It quickly became clear that Schubert would be a focal point of the album, complemented by two weighty cycles by Johannes Brahms and Frank Martin
The protagonist of this new album is the Fairy Guitar Quartet, a group born in 2020 from the meeting of four guitarists united by a strong passion for chamber music. Volver, the album that marks their recording debut, explores the great Argentine musical repertoire with a new research approach, offering an evocative musical journey along the multiple ties that unite Italy to the South American country and allowing you to experience and rediscover intense emotions. In a story of continuous departures and returns, complex fee- lings emerge, chapters with great evocative power that belong to the shared cultural heritage. A precious opportunity to rediscover a world that is always full of charm, a reflection of the creative encounter of dif- ferent cultures (African, indigenous, Spanish and Italian), through a listening journey that develops along the subject of Volver, a theme that resonates deeply in Italian and Argentine culture but also, more generally, in every corner of the southern hemisphere: the sadness of separation from what you love and the hope of re-embracing your roots. With the surprising arrangements of Gianvincenzo Cresta and Francesco Fausto Magaletti, the album features songs by Carlos Gardel, Anibal Troilo, Ariel Ramirez, Gustavo Leguizamon, Daniel Toro and Astor Piazzolla.
Gesualdo: Silenzio mio - Il quarto libro di madrigali
PHI
CD
$20.99Sep 20, 2024
Collegium Vocale Gent and it's founder Philippe Herreweghe continue their recordings of the works of Carlo Gesualdo with 'Silenzio Mio', which contains the Fourth Book of Madrigals, published in 1596. Regarded as one of the most eccentric composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also one of the most creative, he experiments here with new melodic and harmonic effects that enthralled listeners of the time. These innovations are applied to poems by Alessandro Guarini and several anonymous writers, all of which focus on the expression of personal feelings, particularly a 'pathos' new on the literary scene. A veritable historical testimony to the artistic turning point that occurred at the court of Ferrara in the early seventeenth century, this fourth book takes it's place in the long-term recording project of Collegium Vocale, hailed by critics for it's 'homogeneity, contrapuntal transparency and luminosity, strikingly evident even in the most tormented pieces' (Diapason).
First recording of this special collection of very early chamber music. Several pieces are world first recordings. Beautiful acoustics of a church of the time when the music was composed. Very diversified instrumental settings. Use of some nstruments that are nearly unknown today.
Made in USA - Gershwin, Beach & Barber / Claire Huangci
Alpha
CD
$20.99Sep 20, 2024
Presented as 'An Experiment in Modern Music' when it was premiered in 1924, Rhapsody in Blue made George Gershwin famous, and he soon set to work on a version for solo piano, recorded here by Claire Huangci. In her first solo disc for Alpha Classics, Claire was keen to celebrate this centenary alongside her roots in America, where she was born, studied music and made her debut as a concert artist at the age of nine. The brilliant improviser and transcriber Earl Wild (1915-2010) took Gershwin's songs (Liza, Fascinatin' Rhythm, Somebody Loves Me, I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You, Oh, Lady Be Good, The Man I Love) to form the basis of his Seven Virtuoso Etudes for solo piano. Equally virtuosic is the Op. 26 Sonata by Samuel Barber, whom Vladimir Horowitz (who premiered the work in Havana in December 1949) regarded as one of the few Americans capable of writing for the piano. The New Hampshire-born composer Amy Beach took her inspiration from the folk music of both the New World and the Balkans, while retaining her harmonic language inherited from the Romantics. Her Variations Op. 60 (1904) bear witness to these influences.
On his second Pentatone album Sogno, tenor Javier Camarena pays tribute to Francesco Paolo Tosti, together with pianist Ángel Rodríguez. Camarena and Rodríguez have curated a collection of Tosti’s songs that not only include some of his greatest hits but also highlight lesser-known works, including songs in French and English.
The songs selected for this album give us an overview of the different facets of Tosti’s style. Some are deeply sentimental, exemplified by 'Vorrei morire!' — one of the composer’s most famous pieces — while others, such as ‘Marechiare’, draw inspiration from folk traditions. Although Tosti is not often remembered in the history of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century music, Javier Camarena is inviting us to rediscover the enchanting world of his songs. Javier Camarena stands as one of the preeminent tenors of our time, and Sogno marks his second album following the successful Signor Gaetano (2022). Pianist Ángel Rodríguez makes his Pentatone debut.
Each of the works on this recording was either composed by or inspired by a woman. We meet Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) and her Concertino - 'a piece that has accompanied me for years and encapsulates her immense talent', says Mathilde Calderini; Claude Arrieu (1903-90), a pupil of Marguerite Long and Paul Dukas; Mel Bonis (1858-1937); and the young composer Lise Borel (b. 1993), whom Mathilde Calderini commissioned to write a piece entitled Miroir, which she premiered in 2023 with Aurele Marthan, the pianist on this recording and a longstanding artistic partner of hers. Debussy's famous nymph Syrinx and a transcription of his prelude La Fille aux cheveux de lin are also on the programme, as are his Six epigraphes antiques, inspired by the Chansons de Bilitis, named after an (entirely fictional) ancient poetess. Francis Poulenc's Sonata of 1957 is 'probably one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for flute and piano', according to the French flautist. The work was commissioned by the American pianist and philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who also did a great deal for such composers as Ravel, Stravinsky and Barber.
On this critically-acclaimed recording, Arabella Steinbacher brings together Bruch’s world famous First Violin Concerto with Chausson’s lush Poème and Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which is gradually gaining ground as a twentieth-century masterpiece. Steinbacher is joined by the Orquestra Gulbenkian under the baton of Lawrence Foster, with whom she has developed a congenial musical partnership over the years. BBC Music Magazine commented that “there is no doubting Steinbacher’s refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery” while MusicWeb International praised “the tingling climax of this Chausson.”
After a temporary absence, this album now returns to the physical market in an affordable Stereo re-issue. Arabella Steinbacher is a multiple award-winner with an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade. Lawrence Foster and the Orquestra Gulbenkian are also longstanding partners of the label.
Excerpt from review of the original SACD version of this release:
There is no doubting Steinbacher's refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery.
Ingrid Haebler (born in 1929) belongs to the same generation of Viennese pianists as Badura-Skoda, Brendel, Gulda and Demüs. In 1954 (approx. the period when the recordings on this album took place) she won the ARD competition, then as today a quality seal and a guarantee for a successful career (which she enjoyed). However, considerable disagreement has long surrounded her interpretations: for some she is a model because of her flawless technique and the absolute poise of her music-making; for others, she is virtually a symbol of academic discipline. However, her recordings were considered good enough to be used in the faked recordings of the pianist Joyce Hatto – which, when uncovered, led to one of the big and quite unique scandals in the history of music performance.
Pizzetti: Piano Trio, Works for violin, cello and piano
Brilliant Classics
CD
$14.99Mar 20, 2026
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) was an Italian composer, music theorist, and teacher whose work bridges the late Romantic tradition and early twentieth-century modernism. A member of the so-called "Generation of the Eighties" alongside Ottorino Respighi, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Alfredo Casella, Pizzetti sought to redefine Italian music by reconnecting it with the country's Renaissance and Baroque heritage. Deeply inspired by early polyphony, Gregorian chant, and classical drama, he cultivated a style marked by modal harmony, contrapuntal clarity, and a profound sense of lyricism. Beyond composition, he was an influential pedagogue, teaching at the conservatories of Florence and Milan and later directing the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Pizzetti's Piano Trio in A major (1904) is an early work that reflects both his academic training and his emerging individuality. Written while still under the influence of Romantic models such as Brahms and Franck, the trio nonetheless reveals Pizzetti's characteristic Italianate warmth and structural discipline. It's melodic contours often echo the inflections of Italian vocal writing, while it's harmonic palette experiments with modal color. The work's three movements display a balance between lyrical expressiveness and contrapuntal craftsmanship, suggesting the composer's lifelong fascination with vocal polyphony adapted to instrumental textures. In contrast, the Tre Canti for cello and piano (1924) exemplify Pizzetti's mature idiom. Composed two decades later, these three short pieces distill his refined sense of melody and austerity. Each "Canto" unfolds as an expressive monologue, the cello singing with quasi-vocal intensity over restrained piano writing. Modal inflections and chant-like phrasing create an atmosphere of meditative introspection, while subtle rhythmic freedom evokes the flexibility of spoken or sung language. Together, the Tre Canti encapsulate Pizzetti's search for a timeless musical expression-rooted in Italy's ancient past yet articulated in a modern, deeply personal voice. Also included in this program are three short works for violin and piano.
The guitar output of a landmark figure in Argentinean classical music, fusing national melodies and dances with European forms in a fusion of perennial appeal. Carlos Guastavino (1912-2000) became internationally renowned, after the Second World War, for song-cycles and works for his own instrument, the piano, which refracted his Argentinean identity, and the culture of his home nation, through European classical idioms. Without plugging himself in to the current of modernism which coursed through the work of American contemporaries, from Copland and Carter in the US to Chavez and Revueltas in Mexico, and down to Brazilian composers such as Claudio Santoro, Guastavino nonetheless belonged to their age, and spoke of his time through his music. Composed between 1967 and 1973, his three sonatas for the guitar embody sonata form in both the progress of their individual movements and their larger, three-movement structures. The First Sonata is dedicated to his brother, Jose Amadeo, who played the guitar as an amateur, and inspired Carlos to write for the instrument. Jose Amadeo died by his own hand while Carlos was at work on the sonata, and it's central movement is an elegy to his memory. The Second, more Romantic in tone, deploys native rhythms such as the Zampa as well as jazzy harmonies. The Third returns to the Zampa but in a more intricately worked style. Here, the central movement is a smoky Milonga, evoking a mood more familiar from the tangos of Astor Piazzolla. Leonardo Palacios sets the sonatas in their context with transcriptions of five short pieces originally conceived for piano: Apegado a mi, Vidala del Secadal, Santa Fe para llorar, the seventh of Guastavino's Cantos Populares and finally the Bailecito (Little Dance) which established his fame worldwide. As a Uruguayan guitarist with decades of experience as a performer and teacher, Palacios brings both technical refinement and idiomatic sensitivity to Guastavino's music: he also contributes the booklet note to this album, giving the listener an invaluable sense of the composer's place in his world.
For it's sixth album on the Arcana label, Voces Suaves presents a programme dedicated to one of the most influential composers of the seventeenth century, the great Giacomo Carissimi. The album features Carissimi's most famous work, the masterful oratorio Jephte, alongside two of his rarely performed virtuoso motets. It also includes the astonishingly theatrical Cristo smarrito by Domenico Mazzocchi, Carissimi's contemporary in Rome. The works on the album showcase the expressive power of Carissimi's musical language, as well as the remarkable virtuosity of the singers who originally performed his music. Instrumental interludes by Carissimi-found in the collection of his pupil Marc-Antoine Charpentier-have been interpolated into the score of Jephte, creating a unique version of the oratorio as it may have been performed in Rome during the composer's lifetime.
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater - Vivaldi: Nisi Dominus / Engeltjes, PRJCT Amsterdam
PENTATONE
CD
$14.99$19.99Save 25%Mar 22, 2024
PRJCT Amsterdam and its artistic director Maarten Engeltjes present two of the greatest vocal works of the baroque era: Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus. While Vivaldi’s virtuosic piece contemplates the helplessness of people when God does not support their efforts, Pergolesi’s portrait of the weeping Mary at the Cross embodies what the “nameless” parents of a deceased child go through. In the Stabat Mater, Engeltjes’s counter-tenor blends together seamlessly and soothingly with Shira Patchornik’s soprano voice, resulting in an interpretation that is both profound and deeply relatable.
PRJCT Amsterdam is a young, innovative baroque ensemble centred around counter-tenor Maarten Engeltjes, and founded in 2017. Engeltjes is one of the most sought-after counter-tenors of today, working with several of the most esteemed early music groups and conductors. After having won multiple major baroque competitions, soprano Shira Patchornik is quickly establishing herself as an important singer on the opera and concert stage. All artists make their Pentatone debut.
Barbara Strozzi, a Venetian singer and composer who lived between 1619 and 1677, stands out as a rare jewel in the musical landscape of the Italian Seicento. The adoptive (and perhaps natural) daughter of Giulio Strozzi, a man of letters belonging to the illustrious Florentine family, she rejected the alternative prospects of matrimony or life in a convent in order to devote herself entirely to her one true passion: music. Moreover, she aimed to assert herself not merely as a performer, but also as a composer, thereby transgressing the strict rules of the period. Over the course of twenty years she published over a hundred and twenty cantatas and other works for solo voice, a number unequalled by any of her contemporaries. In her most significant works she combines the absolute originality of her formal structures with extraordinarily intense and exuberant poetics of the "affects." In these respects her vocal writing is comparable only with that of the century's greatest Italian composer, Claudio Monteverdi. After five successful albums with Giuliano Carmignola and Mario Brunello, the Accademia dell'Annunciata, conducted by Riccardo Doni, offers us a portrait of this extraordinary artist, arguably the greatest Italian composer of all time. In an era when the music scene was almost exclusively male, Barbara Strozzi managed to carve out a unique place for herself, becoming one of the most fascinating personalities of 17th-century music, a figure that is today given voice by soprano Laura Catrani.
In a century that saw many illustrious French and German composers write for two flutes, the six sonatas of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach stand out as the most significant, complex and technically demanding of this repertoire. Ever since they were rediscovered and published almost a century ago, they have become a stable part of the flute catalogue, appreciated and performed on both historic and modern instruments. Viewing it as the quintessential work of Friedemann's creative output, the specialist Peter Wollny even sees it as a summa of his entire production, full of quotations and reminiscences of his previous works. After the album devoted to the sonatas of C.P.E. Bach (A 537, Diapason d'or), Manuel Granatiero, accompanied by the Italo-Croatian flautist Eleonora Biscevic, now turns his attention to this masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach's eldest son. Arriving some thirty-five years after the first, and only, recorded version on period instruments (by Barthold Kuijken and Marc Hantai), this new recording offers a fresh perspective on music of extraordinary brilliance, passion and virtuosity.
Silvestrov: Echoes of Harmony - Piano Music, Vol. 3
Brilliant Classics
CD
$14.99Oct 11, 2024
21st-century piano music by the most distinguished Ukrainian composer of our time, recorded by a Polish pianist who has already won acclaim for his interpretations of Silvestrov's music. With the album 'Melodies of Silence', Tomasz Kamieniak demonstrated his affinity with the music of Valentyn Silvestrov, as international critics have recognised. 'The spectrum of piano literature is referenced,' according to Gramophone, 'thus making Silvestrov's endeavour as inclusive as it is extensive. Kamieniak is an enlightening guide, and one looks forward to future instalments in a project like no other.' This second instalment continues to document the fertile creativity which Silvestrov has found in the last quarter-century, especially in the field of music for the piano and for choirs. Begun seemingly as a distraction from large-scale works, this concentration on the piano has resulted in some 30 hours of music, organised into several dozen cycles of short pieces, most of them hardly more than a couple of minutes in length. Silvestrov then organised these into 'meta-cycles', each of them lasting in excess of an hour, intended to be performed as an unbroken continuity. 'Echoes of Harmony' can thus be viewed as a natural extension of 'Melodies of Silence'. The movements pay tribute to established genres: serenades, pastorals, waltzes and bagatelles. Characteristically for Silvestrov, the music continually seems to evoke a lost, Schubertian past, while also reflecting on the impossibility of recovering it. This approach creates a sense of fleeting time, where the music seems to stretch infinitely, suspended in space. There's no clear endpoint in these miniatures, allowing the music to linger, dissolve, and pause. Silvestrov is himself an accomplished pianist, who draws a deep range of sonority from the piano, and his pieces encourage interpreters to find a centre of stillness both in the music and in themselves, without recourse to the kind of chill-out aesthetic of many contemporary piano composers. Kamieniak enjoys a personal friendship with the composer, and his booklet introduction reflects both on the nature of these pieces and on their shared history. 'Does the composer leave room for interpretational latitude?' he asks 'Will micro-rubatos, micro-accelerations, micro-dynamics resonate with every listener? Questions abound, and among the more pertinent ones is whether a composer as rigorously attuned to his vision as Silvestrov will ever find satisfaction in interpretations by artists other than himself.' At any rate, Kameniak has become one of the composer's most insightful interpreters. - Valentin Silvestrov was born in 1937 in Kiev, Ukraine. He followed composition lessons with Boris Lyatoshynsky. In 2022 he fled from Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February. He lives in Berlin. - Silvestrov's musical style might be labeled Post-Modern. Using traditional tonal and modal techniques, Silvestrov creates dramatic and emotional textures, qualities which he suggests are otherwise sacrificed in much of contemporary music. "I do not write new music. My music is a response to and an echo of what already exists," Silvestrov has said. - The album Echoes of Harmony, featuring a collection of piano miniatures spanning from 2005 to 2021, form a cohesive, large-scale musical narrative. Silvestrov's fondness for bagatelles shines through in these works, representing his favoured genre in recent years. Under the broad umbrella of this genre, one encounters miniatures, including Serenades, Waltzes, Elegies, Pastorals, Tangos, Minuets, Preludes, Postludes, Mazurkas, Lullabies, Musical Moments, Barcaroles, and more. Music of touching simplicity and charm, offering consolation and peace. - This album is the successor of pianist Tomasz Kamieniak's highly successful CD "Melodies of Silence" by Valentin Silvestrov.
