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Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 / Haselböck, Vienna Academy Orchestra (Complete RESOUND)
Telemann: Ouverture et Concerti pour Darmstadt
Calling the Muse
Des pas sous la neige / Grare
Joël Grare, percussionist and tireless seeker of offbeat sounds and instruments, here presents his third album for Alpha: ‘Footprints beneath the snow: first sounds of innocence, cowbells and jingle-bells, sounds swallowed up by the mountain’… Through his compositions and inspirational influences, he follows a dizzying emotional Alpine path, along with his amazing instruments: drums, balafon, melodica, sanza, cowbells of all sizes, Japanese drums, trompiki, rainstick, thunder sheet – and his famous ‘clavicloche’. He writes: “One early afternoon in January 1986 I visited the Devouassoud workshop in Chamonix, manufacturer of the jingle bells and tongued cowbells that adorn the animals’ necks, filling the mountainside with their chimes… I added these new treasures to my percussion set, not realizing that these newbies arranged among my cymbals would eventually become an instrument in their own right… Totally unlike church bells, whose pitches are pre-calculated when casting them, the pitch of cowbells is only approximate. The low-pitched bells are called “dull”, and the high-pitched ones “bright” – you need only a few cowbell notes to identify a particular herd. When trying to assemble a full tuned set, you might test several hundred cowbells and pick out just a few… To collect a chromatic set of three-and-a-half octaves took me a good twenty years!”
Mozart: Don Giovanni / Rhorer, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie
Here is the third and last instalment in the ‘Live at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées’ series of Mozart operas conducted by Jérémie Rhorer. After Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and La clemenza di Tito comes Don Giovanni, recorded in 2016. On the occasion of the performances (directed by Stéphane Braunschweig) during which Radio France recorded the present discs, Le Figaro wrote: ‘Jérémie Rhorer expertly conducted his orchestra “Le Cercle de l’Harmonie”. On the stage, Jean-Sébastien Bou sang and acted the title role impeccably. He was seconded by his valet Leporello, superbly played by the Canadian Robert Gleadow. A thrilling production both musically and intellectually.’ The cast is completed by the ardent Myrtò Papatanasiu in the role of Donna Anna, the lovely voice of Julie Boulianne as Donna Elvira and the elegant timbre of Julien Behr as Don Ottavio, not forgetting the magnificent Commendatore of Steven Humes and the lively Zerlina and Masetto of Anna Grevelius and Marc Scoffoni.
Rayon de lune
Le Jeune: Motets for the Catholic Religion and Protestant Psalms
Rameau: Daphnis & Egle
Dvořák & Martinů: Cello Concertos / Victor Julien-LaFerriere
After a first recital album devoted to Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Denisov in the company of the pianist Jonas Vitaud, Victor Julien-Laferrière now presents two cello concertos by Antonín Dvorák (op.104) and Bohuslav Martinu (no.1, H196), accompanied by the Liège Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gergely Madaras.
Van Eyck: Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Garden of Flute Delights) / Lazarevitch
Published in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Garden of Flute Delights) is a collection of variations for solo flute on the ‘hits’ of European music of the time, borrowed from such composers as Caccini, Dowland, Bull and Moulinié. Its Dutch compiler, Jacob van Eyck, was born blind. As carillonist of Utrecht Cathedral, subsequently in charge of all the city’s chimes of bells, he made fundamental advances in acoustics and bell tuning. Despite this busy activity, he also found time to play the recorder as a virtuoso, especially ‘to entertain strollers in the garden of St John’s Church in the evening with the sound of his little flute’. It was probably the repertory built up in this context that he published under the title Der Fluyten Lust-Hof. For this recording, François Lazarevitch uses instruments characteristic of Van Eyck’s time: not only the recorder, but also and above all cylindrical transverse flutes, as well as a seventeenth-century musette.
Les Grandes Eaux Musicales De Versailles
Mozart: Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail / Rhorer, Le Cercile de l'Harmonie
‘In Die Entfu?hrung, Mozart presents a completely unprecedented vision of the singspiel, with highly developed ensembles and musical continuity at a time when contemporary spectators were expecting the standard alternation between spoken and sung sections’, says Jérémie Rhorer in the interview that accompanies the discs. That musical dramaturgy lies at the centre of this interpretation, which is served by an outstandingly homogeneous cast.
This recording launches a series of recordings of concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and a collaboration between Alpha Classics and Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, who will continue to place their excellence at the service of the great masterpieces of Mozart.
Beethoven Rediscovered
Alpha continues to explore its catalogue and this year again offers a wide variety of combinations. After a box assembling the gems of the Baroque era (Masters of the Baroque - Alpha 372), the piano is now given pride of place. The box set Masters of the Piano brings together 10 albums in which great contemporary interpreters (Nelson Goerner, Alexander Lonquich, François-Frédéric Guy, Eric Le Sage, Edna Stern, Anna Vinnitskaya) retrace three centuries of creation on the piano, from Bach to Shostakovich, by way of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Debussy. The piano will also be at the heart of a 7-release box set devoted to Alexei Lubimov’s recordings. Fortepiano, piano, prepared piano . . . the Russian musician has distinguished himself in every repertoire. Finally, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, the Beethoven Rediscovered box highlights 16 albums that offer a chance to rediscover his symphonies, concertos and sonatas on period instruments, the fortepiano, etc.
Past praise of the previously released volumes included in this set:
Beethoven/Liszt: Complete Symphonies / Martynov
Yury Martynov is one of the few pianists around with the technical resources, musical grasp and conviction to recreate this legacy persuasively. In doing so, he amply demonstrates its continued usefulness and vitality. It seems safe to say that he has given us the Beethoven-Liszt cycle for our time, and one unlikely soon to be superseded.
– Gramophone
Beethoven: Piano Concertos No 1 & 2 / Schoonderwoerd, Ensemble Cristofori
Passagework is never rattled off mechanically, always expressively shaped. The slow movements are both memorably beautiful. The recording is close, in a richly resonant acoustic; everything is extremely vivid, with Schoonderwoerd’s breathing often audible, though not distractingly. Mandatory listening for anyone with the slightest interest in Beethoven performance practice.
– Fanfare
Akoé - Nuevas músicas antiguas
Perrault: Contes de ma mère l'oye
La Passione / Hannigan, Ludwig Orchestra
Antonio Draghi & Leonardo García Alarcón: El Prometeo
Stradella: San Giovanni Battista / Guillon, Le Banquet Celeste

A composer who led a dissolute life and ended up stabbed to death in Genoa, Stradella nevertheless left a distinctive stamp on the history of music. He is situated at the intersection of several stylistic paths and periods, at the crossroads between opera and sacred drama, since his output, and especially San Giovanni Battista (St John the Baptist), marks the encounter of the great Roman oratorio inherited from Carissimi with the Venetian opera of Cavalli. Stradella is also close to the next generation, that of Scarlatti and Handel. His music is characterized by liveliness, expressiveness and profound humanity. Although San Giovanni Battista enjoyed genuine success when it was premiered in 1675, it was only in 1949 that the work was exhumed from the libraries where its score lay slumbering. That event took place in Perugia, and the role of Salome was sung by Maria Callas.
Bach: Weltiche Kantaten, BWV 30a & 207
Ortiz: Trattado de glosas / Cocset, Balestracci, Les Basses Reunies
Offenbach: Fables de la Fontaine / Deshayes, Heck, Rouen Haute-Normandie Opera Orchestra
Tartini: Sonate a violino solo & Aria del Tasso / Bovi, Banchini
Although Giuseppe Tartini was taught the first rudiments of music at the College of the Padri dell Scuole Pie in Capodistria, and may have received lessons in counterpoint from the Franciscan Bohuslav Cernohorsky in Assisi, many elements give the impression that the boy had an education that was anything but ‘academic,’ and that the future ‘maestro delle nazioni’ largely taught himself. However, there does exist a declared model for the music of Tartini, at least for a certain period: that of Corelli. His output seems dominated initially by the influence of his great predecessor in terms of both language and structure. The reference to folk music in his music is also obvious. Another interesting element in the sonatas presented on this release is the presence of mottoes of varying length placed next to the incipits of certain movements, and often written in a ciphered cuneiform alphabet invented by the composer. These are poetic quotations, mostly drawn from the works of Metastasio, although not all of them have been identified. At the end of this recording is one of Tartini’s very rare vocal pieces, the last composition copied into MS 1888/1. The poem Solitario bosco ombroso, based on a clearly Petrarchan model and on the classical antecedents of Tibullus and Propertius, was published for the first time by the poet Paolo Rolli in London in 1727, in a musical setting by Rolli himself.
Mozart: Music for Clarinet / Héau, Quatuor Manfred
Du Mont: Motets for the Chapel of Louis XIV at the Louvre
