After stopping off in Cothen, Benjamin Alard continues his musical journey through the works of J.S. Bach. Here he focuses on the composer's early years in Leipzig, with the six Trio Sonatas, which he performs on harpsichord and clavichord. The famous 'little keyboard book' of Anna Magdalena takes us into the more intimate world of the Kantor's household.

London, 1760. Handel had just died and George III acceded to the throne. During the reign of this monarch and his queen Charlotte, both discerning musicians, musical life in the British capital was to enjoy an exceptional revival. Virtuosos and composers from all over Europe flocked there, vying with each other in originality and modernity. La Reveuse offers us a chance to sample the heady climate of the age.

For this, the eleventh volume of his complete edition, Benjamin Alard has assembled all the keyboard masterpieces that Bach published under the heading Clavier-Ubungen I and II - the six Partitas, the Italian Concerto and Overture in the French Style, supplemented here by the brilliant Duetti from Clavier-Ubung III. Two remarkable harpsichords lend their voices to these expert readings: the sumptuous Hass of 1740, and for the first time in this recording venture, an English Kirkman built in 1757.

Ten years after their last collaboration, Jacques Duvall and Benjamin Schoos return with Plein Sommeil, a duo album that is at once melancholic, ironic, and tender-a poetic mirror of the fatigue of the modern world. The legendary lyricist for Lio, Chamfort, and Daho meets the indie pop producer and sonic adventurer of Freaksville, in a generational union as improbable as it is natural. Between Brussels and Paris, they weave songs about slowness, worn-out love, and resistance through gentleness. Blending original compositions and delicate covers (The Kinks, Higelin, Daho), the album evokes a sensual and lucid refuge amid the overheating of everyday life. Recorded with Bertrand Burgalat, The Loved Drones, and lush string arrangements, Plein Sommeil embraces a handcrafted, timeless aesthetic. It's motto: "Slow business" - a manifesto against the speed and emptiness of contemporary times. Each song, balancing irony and elegance, celebrates fragility and humanity.

Ten years after their last collaboration, Jacques Duvall and Benjamin Schoos return with Plein Sommeil, a duo album that is at once melancholic, ironic, and tender-a poetic mirror of the fatigue of the modern world. The legendary lyricist for Lio, Chamfort, and Daho meets the indie pop producer and sonic adventurer of Freaksville, in a generational union as improbable as it is natural. Between Brussels and Paris, they weave songs about slowness, worn-out love, and resistance through gentleness. Blending original compositions and delicate covers (The Kinks, Higelin, Daho), the album evokes a sensual and lucid refuge amid the overheating of everyday life. Recorded with Bertrand Burgalat, The Loved Drones, and lush string arrangements, Plein Sommeil embraces a handcrafted, timeless aesthetic. It's motto: "Slow business" - a manifesto against the speed and emptiness of contemporary times. Each song, balancing irony and elegance, celebrates fragility and humanity.

This special DVD collection presents The Royal Ballet in three of the world's most popular ballets, as featured in the best-selling book Ballet Spectacular.

BALLET SPECTACULAR
(3-DVD Box set)

Adolphe Adam
GISELLE

Giselle - Alina Cojocaru
Count Albrecht - Johan Kobborg
Myrtha - Marianela Nuñez
Hilarion - Martin Harvey

Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House Orchestra
Boris Gruzin, conductor

Marius Petipa, choreographer (after Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot)
John MacFarlane, stage and costume designer
Jennifer Tipton, lighting designer

Léo Delibes
COPPÉLIA

Swanilda - Leanne Benjamin
Franz - Carlos Acosta
Doctor Coppélius - Luke Heydon
Coppélia - Leana Palmer

Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House Orchestra
Nicolae Moldaveanu, conductor

Ninette de Valois, choreographer (after Lev Ivanov and Enrico Cecchetti)
Osbert Lancaster, stage and costume designer
John B. Read, lighting designer

Ferdinand Hérold
LA FILLE MAL GARDÉE

Colas - Carlos Acosta
Lise - Marianela Nuñez
Simone - William Tuckett
Alain - Jonathan Howells

Royal Ballet
Royal Opera House Orchestra
Anthony Twiner, conductor

Frederick Ashton, choreographer
Osbert Lancaster, set and costume designer
John B. Read, lighting designer

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, January 2006 (Giselle), 2000 (Coppélia) and 2 February 2005 (La Fille Mal Gardée)

Bonus:
- Illustrated synopsis
- Cast gallery
- Historic 10-minute film, “The Ballet Moves” (Coppélia)
- llustrated biography of Osbert Lancaster (Coppélia)

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Picture format: NTSC 16:9 anamorphic
Sound format: LPCM Stereo / 5.1 Surround sound
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language (bonus): English
Running time: 5 hrs 44 mins
No. of DVDs: 3

No entries show up in the Fanfare Archive for Benjamin Alard, which I suppose shouldn’t be surprising, since counting this new release his discography numbers only two recordings according to ArkivMusic; the other, also on Alpha, is a CD of Bach’s trio sonatas for organ. His official bio, however, cites two other CDs on a label, Editions Hortus, that may have limited distribution outside of France.

Born in 1985, the French Alard is both an award-winning harpsichordist and organist who studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. At 25, he has already performed with leading period-instrument ensembles, such as La Petite Bande under Sigiswald Kuijken and Capriccio Stravagante under Skip Sempé, and he has established himself as a leading presence as a keyboard artist on the early-music scene, participating in a number of international festivals.

Going up against established masters in this repertoire—and for apples-to-apples comparison I cite only harpsichordists—such as Christophe Rousset, Pieter-Jan Belder, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Gustav Leonhardt, Trevor Pinnock, Igor Kipnis, and Blandine Verlet—the young Alard has stones; you’ve got to give him that. The question is does he have the goods to pull it off? And the answer, in a word, is “yes.”

The six keyboard partitas that comprise Part I of Bach’s Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) in its totality are arguably the pinnacle of the composer’s works for solo harpsichord. Though they are among Bach’s earliest pieces to be published (they appeared in print between 1726 and 1730), they are actually the last of his three sets of keyboard suites to be written. (They were composed between 1725 and 1730–31.) The English Suites were composed sometime between 1715 and 1720, and the French Suites, between 1722 and 1725. We may therefore assume that the partitas are a summation, up to that time, of Bach’s compositional style and technique as applied to the harpsichord, for which they were written.

Speculation has it that Bach intended to write a seventh partita, perhaps as a tribute to his predecessor in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau, who had published two volumes of his own Neue Clavier-Übung, each containing seven partitas. Bach’s choice of keys for his six partitas does suggest a planned seventh that would have had to be in F Major to complete the scheme; indeed, F Major is the key of the Italian Concerto that opens the Clavier-Übung, part II. Is it possible that the movements of the Italian Concerto would have been incorporated into the seventh, missing, partita? It’s an interesting theory.

In three out of the six partitas, Bach pretty much follows standard operating procedure vis-à-vis succession of movements. All six partitas, without exception, begin with an introductory movement, though fancifully, perhaps, Bach calls each by a different name: Praeludium, Sinfonia, Fantasia, Ouverture, Praeambulum, and Toccata. These are followed in Nos. 1, 3, and 5 by the customary stylized dance movements: Allemande, Courante (or Corrente, depending on whether Bach was in French or Italian mood), and Sarabande. Again, in all six partitas, one or more take-your-pick dance movements, such as Menuet, Gavotte, Passepied, etc., are inserted after the Sarabande. And in all but No. 2, the partitas end with the customary concluding Gigue. But No. 2, one of the three “irregulars,” ends with a movement Bach calls Capriccio, which is not in the usual 6/8 or 12/8 gigue meter, but in 2/4, so it’s not just another gigue by a whimsical name.

In the two remaining “irregular” partitas, Nos. 4 and 6, Bach gets cutesy with the standard layout of movements, inserting an Aria or Air in between the Courante and Sarabande, so that we end up with insertions both before the Sarabande and after it. To mix it up further, in No. 4, Bach calls his Courante by its French name, but the Aria that follows it by its Italian name; whereas in No. 6, he reverses himself, calling his Corrente by its Italian name and his Air by its French name. Whether this has some special significance or not, I don’t know, but is it too much to imagine that Bach wasn’t the stern wig he’s often portrayed as, and that he was just being mischievous? The aforementioned Capriccio movement offers ample evidence of the composer’s off-the-wall humor; it’s a real ear-tickler.

A final footnote to this whole business is that at one point the partitas came close to being called German Suites to complement the already written English and French Suites, which, technically speaking, are no more English or French, respectively, than are the partitas German. And who would know better than Christophe Rousset? Harpsichordist, Baroque music specialist, and Frenchman, he has observed that all of Bach’s keyboard suites follow a largely Italian convention.

Now, back in Fanfare 27:4, Patrick Meanor reviewed a recording of the partitas on the Satirino label performed by harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss. That was in 2004. Six years later, as inexplicably but often happens, the same album was sent to the magazine to be reviewed again, and this time, as recently as 33:5, it was assigned to Christopher Brodersen. The American-born Weiss has long been active on the Parisian period-instrument scene, having collaborated with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants for many years. In any case, both Meanor and Brodersen found much to rave about in Weiss’s readings, which the harpsichordist performs on a copy of a Gottfried Silbermann instrument built by Anthony Sidey. I missed Meanor’s earlier review, but based on Brodersen’s glowing account, I decided to acquire the Weiss on my own. Contra my colleagues, I found Sidey’s harpsichord, or Satirino’s recording of it, hard and metallic sounding and fatiguing to listen to. So, only in part for that reason, Weiss’s recording would not have received my recommendation had I reviewed it.

That is not the case with the sound of Alard’s harpsichord, which is also modeled after a German instrument by Sidey. It is captured perfectly at an ideal distance in the ambient and ever so slightly reverberant acoustic of the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bon-Secours in Paris. Balanced throughout its registers, of crystal clarity in its voicing, and so dulcet of tone is this instrument that I found myself listening, enchanted, to all six partitas straight through without tiring of it.

If Meanor found Weiss’s performances “passionate,” “poignant,” “terrifying,” and “filled with existential dread,” I found them aggressive, driven, and in-your-face—other reasons, in addition to the aforementioned clangorous and clattering sound of the instrument, that Weiss is not to my liking. In contrast, I find Alard’s readings poetic, lyrical, filled with grace, and ultimately sublime. Perhaps it’s the difference between the American in Paris, Weiss, and the patrician elegance and refinement of the natural-born Frenchman, Alard.

In Alard’s playing, I hear a natural and logical connection to, and extension of, François Couperin and the French keyboard tradition, and I find it exquisitely beautiful. The style is manifested in Alard’s exceptionally imaginative, perfectly timed, and delightful agréments that he applies so tastefully in the binary repeats. Even in the fiendishly difficult Capriccio of the C-Minor Partita, which is already wacky enough as is with its oddball dissonances and harmonic excursions, Alard finds the time and space between the notes to add just the right zinger of an embellishment. Just listen to the mordents that trip by at 1:29 and again at 1:33 in the repeat of the A section. But there are other ways to embellish besides adding ornamental notes, and you can hear it in Alard’s playing of the repeated B section. Here the embellishing takes the form of coordinating the right and left hands differently than in the first time through, so that the syncopated and offbeat rhythms in the counterpoint take on a totally different emphasis.

The more I listened to these performances, the more I came to believe that there is as much genius in Alard’s conception of this music as there is in Bach’s creation of it. For me, this is now, and will be for the foreseeable future, the be-all and end-all of Bach keyboard partita recordings. The set is beautifully presented in a four-panel cardboard foldout with detailed, informative notes in French and English and enhanced by a wealth of photographs. If Weiss’s partitas show up on Brodersen’s 2010 Want List, Alard’s may well show up on mine. But whether it does or not (there are always hard choices to make), if you care about Bach on the harpsichord, you must not be without this release for another minute.

-- Jerry Dubins, FANFARE [9/2010]

Benjamin Frith is no stranger to Naxos customers, having previously graced the catalog with a Mendelssohn cycle, John Field's Nocturnes, and other releases. Here he makes his first (and hopefully not last) appearance in Naxos' ongoing series devoted to the complete Scarlatti Sonatas. The playing is splendid. Frith's varied and intelligently deployed dynamic palette, together with his rounded, singing tone, conjures an intimate, poetic aura that's diametrically opposed to the brash, vivacious sound world Mikhail Pletnev brings to this repertoire. I like how Frith keeps the textures alive and vibrant by making very subtle changes in voicing on the repeats (the bass lines and trills in the D major K. 214 sonata, for instance). His unruffled, effortless scales and arpeggios may not bite with the individuality of a Horowitz or Schiff, but their elegant symmetry still delights the ear. With Naxos' first-class sonics, fine notes, and modest price, you can't go wrong. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

"Joseph Lin’s recording of Korngold’s Violin Sonata appears in a collection of arrangements. Gil Shaham recorded the Suite, along with his reading of the Concerto—and Barber’s—and included the Caprice fantastique on “Devil’s Dance” (Deutsche Grammophon 463 483, 24:3), that appeared around Halloween time in 2000. The Suite consists of four movements, “Maiden in the Bridal Chamber,” “Dogberry and Verges,” “Gartenscene,” (a short number played as an encore by Heifetz), and “Masquerade.” These pieces, in a more popular vein than the more ambitious Violin Sonata, showcase Korngold’s rich melodic gift and harmonic imagination, and “Dogberry and Verges” give evidence of a mild sense of humor that the Sonata seems to lack. Lin and Loeb sharply characterize each of these movements, with Lin producing an especially glowing tone in the “Garden Scene” and displaying musical and technical authority in the “Masquerade.” Shaham plays with a more sumptuous tone and soaring portamentos that bring the period and the music vividly to life and he moves forward more coherently—and cogently—in the march, “Dogberry and Verges,” which Lin plays with a drier sensibility approaching that in Prokofiev’s March from The Love for Three Oranges. But Shaham brings a cheekier strut to the final movement, “Masquerade.”

Compared to Kiss, Lin sounds relatively sweet-toned, and the timings of his movements fall between those of Kiss and Waltman. But while those two-odd minutes may seem insignificant in a four-movement work, they also can represent a sort of general relaxation that makes the work sound more discursive, though Lin and Loeb play with plenty of energy and attack the more aggressive passages in the first movement, for example, with plenty of gusto and plenty of sharp-edged panache at the movement’s climax. The duo also takes command in the large-scale Scherzo (at 10:37 in this recording, that movement occupies almost a third of the Sonata’s duration), and though there may be a degree of roughness in Lin’s attack, he brings a sense of excitement to the movement. Lin’s purity of tone on the E string generates thrilling intensity in the slow movement, powering its leaps into the stratosphere. If the Sonata’s dedicatees inspired its seriousness, Korngold certainly rose to the occasion, and so do Lin and Loeb.

The shorter pieces begin with the Serenade from Der Schneemann, a rapt miniature that shows off Lin’s tonal command but also his wide and rather slow vibrato, which, for some listeners, may even threaten to grow annoying. From Korngold’s opera, Die tote Stadt, come the two short pieces, “Tanzlied” and “Marietta’s Lied,” the first a delicately wistful song that’s immediately ingratiating, and the second, an affecting lyrical outpouring that could vie successfully with the most popular works in the genre. The Caprice, subtitled “Wichtelmännchen,” or “Goblins” could similarly almost take the place of several similar pieces, like Bazzini’s Dance of the Goblins or Paganini’s “Witches’ Dance” on recital programs, though it’s more atmospheric than brilliant. Lin sounds a bit more polite in this miniature—and occasionally more ardent, by turns—than does Shaham, who plays it with more suggestive macabre energy.

Naxos’s issue offers yet another chance to ponder the question posed above: did Korngold’s work in Hollywood debase his musical coin or polish it? Lin and Loeb make a great deal of this repertoire, and their readings deserve a recommendation to anyone interested in it, in young violinists (the release appears as part of Naxos’s “Laureate” series), or in Korngold—or even to more general listeners. Recommended."

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Fifteen years before Chopin wrote his first "nocturne", Irish pianist/composer John Field composed his Nocturne No. 1 in E-flat major, followed by at least 15 more pieces in the same style. In these short works for solo piano, Field--who was one of the most celebrated pianists in the world during the first quarter of the 19th century--put form to the idea of a contemplative, lyrical composition, specifically tailored to the piano's expressive capabilities. These "night" pieces are primarily characterized by a dominant, gracefully flowing melody, with most of the harmonic activity in the pianist's left hand. Although other pianists have recorded at least some of Field's Nocturnes--most notably John O'Conor (Telarc) and Miceál O'Rourke (Chandos)--Benjamin Frith's own uniquely inflected, poetic readings have a satisfying aura of intimacy cast in the warm colors of his well-tempered, expertly recorded piano. Although O'Conor's playing is more lyrical, with more fluid legatos, Frith generally takes more time--and these invariably lovely pieces blossom just as fully and brilliantly. The two sonatas are not notable for their originality--they owe much to their dedicatee, Field's teacher Clementi--but they reveal the young composer's gift for understanding the piano's unique voice. This is music for everyone--for any time of day, for any prevailing mood--and we're lucky to have such a fine pianist as Frith joining the Field field. [10/22/1999] --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com