ARMIDE

In 1958 Poulenc composed La voix humaine, a one-act opera for soprano and orchestra, based on the monodrama of the same name, written for the Com�die-Fran�aise by his friend Jean Cocteau. In this staging of the end of an amorous relationship, we hear only the woman's side of a final telephone conversation with the man who has abandoned her. The orchestra in this innovative work is used not only to unify the composition, but also to reveal what the voice, laid bare by a moving parl�-chant� style, does not say. Fian�ailles pour rire and Chemins de l'amour, usually for voice and piano, but presented here in an orchestrated version by one of our finest conductors, Fr�d�ric Chaslin, completes this eloquent rendition of works of a bittersweetness that Poulenc transcends like no other.

Ll Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova focus here on the little-known violin concertos of the second half of the eighteenth century. Bringing together the works of Franz Benda and Johann Gottlieb Graun (in a world premiere recording), pillars of the orchestra at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, as well as those of the Venetian virtuoso Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen and the iconoclastic Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (also in a world premiere recording), this album offers a bright panorama of the evolution of the genre, culminating in Mozart's achievements in the last quarter of the century, of which Il Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova offer us a glimpse with the famous Rondo in C K. 373.

Premiered just a few months before the French Revolution, Gr�try's Raoul Barbe-bleue is an op�ra comique with musical and dramatic implications so remarkable they even inspired Offenbach. Raoul Barbe-bleue depicts a cruel gentry from a political point of view, and even dares to mock through comic effects. The mysterious atmosphere that emerges from the drama (reminiscent of Weber's singspiel) stems from refined and elegant musical writing that cannot be compared to Gr�try's naive and simple early works. This premiere recording from Apart�, featuring a brilliant cast under the direction of Martin Wahlberg, reveals a considerable richness that will appeal to both the neophyte and the specialist.

Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord take you on a journey to discovery Duni, the father of op�ra-comique through two of his emblematic works: Les deux chasseurs et la laiti�re, and Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le, recorded here for the first time. Combining musical innovation and comic genius, these two "com�dies m�l�es d'ariettes" were at the origin of the metamorphosis of the light genre, which led directly to Mozart and the singspiel. Duni displayed a wealth of theatricality and an art of 'quiproquo' (misunderstanding), as in Alberti's aria "Ch�re Laurette" (Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le) or the superb final quartet "Ainsi le sort" from Les Deux chasseurs et la laiti�re. Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord, who had already highlighted Mozart's debt to Gr�try, continue their fascinating lyrical epic through the treasures of French opera, fully embracing it's revolutionary spirit and dramatic force.

The ensemble Aedes began it's musical journey with Poulenc, under the impetus of conductor Mathieu Romano. Here, at the head of Les Si�cles, Romano returns to the unclassifiable composer to record two of his major works. In the pious contemplation of the Litanies, here performed in the manuscript version, and the orchestral luxuriance of the Stabat Mater, spirituality is expressed through music that is lively, sensitive and even, at times, sensuous. Sculpting out every phrase and note, always at the service of the text, the ensemble and Mathieu Romano confirm their affinity with the composer's language. As an interlude Mathieu Romano has included a secular piece, O doulx regard, o parler gratieux, by the Renaissance composer Cl�ment Janequin. The boundaries between earthly love and mystical love are thus abolished in favor of pure emotion.

Christophe Rousset continues and concludes his exploration of Bach's splendid keyboard corpus in this new recording, which combines depth, virtuosity and interiority. The Toccatas are among Bach's earliest works composed between 1705 and 1712. They bear witness to the influence of northern masters such as Buxtehude, and are above all the site of Bach's stylistic blossoming, giving free rein to his fantasy, his freedom and his architectural and expressive genius.

For "Jouissons de nos beaux ans!" the French tenor Cyrille Dubois returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor Gy�rgy Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the eighteenth-century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time. Focussing on haute-contre roles - the haute-contre voice being the ancestor of the leggero tenor, or t�nor l�ger - the program includes some fine excerpts from operas by Rameau, together with some equally beautiful arias and choruses by composers such as Dauvergne, Mondonville, but also Iso, Royer, Berton, and others. Cyrille Dubois is magnificent as Tarsis (in Tarsis et Z�lie by Francoeur and Rebel), flamboyant as Ag�nor (in Les Caract�res de la Folie by Bernard de Bury) and extremely moving as C�phale (in L'Aurore et C�phale by Francoeur). This recital provides a full picture of the Baroque hero - sometimes tender and amorous, sometimes fiery or triumphant - who receives here one of the finest interpretations.

Maxim Emelyanychev's affinity with Mozart is well known, especially when it comes to piano works. In 2018, the conductor and keyboardist treated us to a recording that not only displayed his virtuosity and musicianship, but also revealed his remarkably close understanding of the composer's music. Today, the symphonies are the focus of his first long-term project with Il Pomo d'Oro, an ensemble he has been working with as it's conductor since 2013. As he points out, this project, aiming eventually to provide a complete set of the Mozart symphonies, is unlike anything he has recorded with the ensemble hitherto on period instruments. The approach here is original: each volume will feature an early symphony by Mozart, together with one of his great mature symphonies, which will enable the listener to perceive his many facets, revealed in the course of his development. Each volume will also include a bonus work, featuring a special guest. Inaugurating the series, Maxim Emelyanychev himself provides the hors d'�uvre with Concerto o.23 K.488, played on a fortepiano, before going on to conduct Mozart's Symphonies Nos.1 and 41.

In 1914, Stravinsky, more than ever, was taken up by his interest in pagan Russia and it's folk rituals. He worked on the composition of Les Noces, intended for the Ballets Russes, until 1923. These "choreographed scenes with music and voices" represent, in four tableaux, the Russian folk wedding ritual. Sober, stylised, razor-sharp, Stravinsky's music combines rhythmic brutality with an incantatory force, evoking both the timelessness and the inexorability of that ritual. There were several attempts at different instrumentations of the work. Here Mathieu Romano, the Ensemble Aedes and Les Si�cles present the world premiere recording of the full 1919 version (completed in 2007 by Theo Verbey), written for an ensemble of percussion instruments, two Hungarian cymbaloms, a harmonium, a pianola, and voices. The same unusual instrumentation, clear, incisive, precise, is used for Robin Melchior's arrangement of Ravel's Bol�ro: an unexpected and amazing, suave, and totally successful.

CELLO SUITES 1-6

Arvo P�rt, one of the world's most performed living composers, will be eighty-seven in September. His music has been featured in many films, including Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre and Habemus Papam, Sorrentino's La grande bellezza, Paul Thomas Andersson's There Will Be Blood, Denis Arcand's Les Invasions barbares, and several films by Terrence Malick. A precursor of the Nordic minimalist school, he composes music that is modern, refined and deeply religious. He is the creator of the "tintinnabuli" compositional style. Morphing Chamber Orchestra, an innovative ensemble in the fields of Classical music and crossover, led by it's musical director Tomasz Wabnic, presents a selection of P�rt's most famous works with an all-star cast including Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. They perform the Stabat Mater, a masterpiece of sacred music, presented here in a new arrangement approved by the composer. The program also includes some beautiful songs - Vater Unser, Ein Wallfahrtslied and My Heart's in the Highlands - performed by acclaimed countertenor Andreas Scholl, as well as some fine instrumental pieces - Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Fratres and Summa. These highly committed musicians transport us to a dreamy Nordic world.

Well established in the field of historically informed performance, the Italian ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro has recently expanded: it now includes a choir, and this is it's first solo recording. Conducted by Giuseppe Maletto, the ensemble presents here Gesualdo's fascinating first book of Sacr� Cantiones. Less well known than his madrigals, the nineteen five-part motets that make up this work explore the theme of repentance through the Liturgy of Penance and the figure of the Virgin Mary. The painfully voluptuous chromaticism and the expressive intensity and refinement of the lines make this work one of the most singular of that period. Gesualdo's interpretation of the liturgical text is intensely dramatic and highly personal. Il Pomo d'Oro renders perfectly the mysterious beauty of this music.

Today, with the amount of recordings aimed at rediscovering the buried treasures of past centuries, it is difficult to ignore the work of Rebecca Clarke. Viola player Vinciane B�ranger, along with Dana Ciocarlie, H�l�ne Collerette and David Louwerse, have devoted a recording to the Clarke's works for viola. Both a composer and a performer, Clarke was one of the foremost professional women in England. Her music, at the crossroads of various currents, navigates at different moments through French music, modality, British folklore, harmonic boldness and exoticism. There is, however, no pastiche: Clarke creates her own honey from these trends in order to construct a quite atypical language that is resolutely modern. From her masterly Viola Sonata to the poetic Morpheus, and not forgetting the trio Dumka or the duet Chinese Puzzle, the performers are keen to paint the musical portrait of this iconoclastic composer. The recording is enhanced with the world premiere of Irish Melody, a long lost score that was recently rediscovered.

Written between 1887 and 1890, Gabriel Faur�'s Requiem is among the best-loved pieces in the choral repertory. Traditionally, Requiems are serious, prayerful laments for the dead. Faur�'s was altogether different. In place of the usual somber mood, his is noted for it's calm, serene and peaceful outlook. The composer revised and expanded the work several times, but it is the original version that is performed here using period instruments and performance practices. This sublimne recording, featuring Ensemble Aedes and Les Si�cles led by Mathieu Romano, also includes Poulenc's Figure Humaine and Debussy's Trois Chansons

On the occasion of the bi-centenary of Charles Gounod’s birth, this first complete string quartet (including two unpublished ones) on period instruments reveals an unknown part of his production, dominated by vocal music.Composer of the very end of the 19th century, Gounod and his five quartets are the worthy heir of the Viennese classicism tradition. The lyrical accents of the Quartet in G minor or the airy lightness of the Scherzo of the Petit Quatuor evoke nothing less than the names of Schubert and Mendelssohn.The musicians of the Quatuor Cambini-Paris (Julien Chauvin, Karine Crocquenoy, Pierre-Éric Nimylowycz and Atsushi Sakaï) gracefully reproduce these pages, full of gravity and sweetness.

The most famous tenor celebrates not only his 60th birthday, but also 40 years of an exceptionally rich and varied, and remarkably generous career. A career spent off the beaten track, constantly regenerated, and showing an insatiable curiosity, a temperament, and an extraordinary vocal timbre. Roberto Alagna captivates audiences everywhere. Here he presents a program that is very much in his own image: showing a contagious passion, an insatiable appetite for the exploration of different repertoires and styles, ranging from opera - French, Italian and Neapolitan, German, Polish and Russian - to Italian and French songs, and crossover music with some surprises up his sleeve.

Cage and Dowland: the two Johns, four hundred years apart, share a common taste for sober expression, concise forms and intimate realization - and for the pleasure that comes from words as such. Each cultivates this desire in his own way. Cage, like a tightrope walker, approaches the essence of musical thought with humor, lightness, and depth, and Dowland aims for the expression of feelings in their purest form. Cultivating as always a fertile anachronism, the Th�l�me ensemble brings together the complete works for two voices and lute by Dowland, several compositions by Cage, and world-renowned artist Sting offers a reworking of his hit song, "Shape of My Heart", which in this new arrangement becomes a kind of 21st-century lute song, coming full circle on an album where Renaissance and present meet, mingle, and merge to transcend the boundaries of aesthetics and genres.

Cyrille Dubois is unstoppable: after two albums dedicated to Liszt and the Boulanger sisters, both acclaimed by the critics, and a flamboyant complete set of Faur� songs, the tenor is back to his preferred repertoire, the French art-song. He reunites with his accomplice, pianist Tristan Ra�s, to bring the Bordeaux composer Louis Beydts (1895-1953) out of oblivion, as most of his pieces are recorded here for the first time. From these miniatures, Cyrille Dubois draws the sap of the musician's art. A pure product of French hedonism, it is refined and elegant, with a generous vocality but also daring, for Beydts forbids himself nothing. Echoes of jazz and light music, of Hahn or Faur�, polymodality and polytonality, his melodies traverse everything between fantasy, humor and contemplation with supreme freedom. By transporting us into this singular universe, Cyrille Dubois establishes himself as an invaluable performer of the repertoire and a pioneer of French music, with an uncommon mastery of the combination of word and music.

FALCON