14 distinct titles introduce this exciting new series uniting the finest Alpha and ZZT Baroque recordings. Discover - or rediscover - universally known works as well as world premiere recordings of rarities. Newly conducted artist interviews allow for fresh perspectives on their recordings. All releases, digipak in format with trilingual booklets, feature photographs by great (Magnum Cooperative) contemporary artists adorning the covers and a strong 'queen of colors' scheme, bringing to mind gods, kings, warriors, the devil, life, violence and death... Themes omnipresent in Baroque art!

Versailles is remembered for its court, its atmosphere, its music, and its splendor which defined a monument with an incomparably rich history. The works associated with the palace have traveled down the centuries, and today represent a precious part of the Western music tradition. In this release, Alpha retraces the musical life of the unique and luminous universe of Versailles. Le Poeme Harmonique, Café Zimmermann, Capriccio Stravagante, and many others invite themselves into the company of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and Jean-Henry d’Anglebert and share with us for a few hours the sumptuous concerts that made Versailles a place like no other.

Since 2015 young conductor Krzysztof Urbanski has been the principal guest conductor of one of Germany’s leading orchestras, the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg. He is also music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and principal guest conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. For this album, Urbanski conducts works of Lutoslawski. The tracklist includes his Concerto for Orchestra, Little Suite (Mala Suita), and Symphony No. 4. Lutoslawski was one of the great composers of the twentieth century. Like Stravinsky and Shostakovich, Lutoslawski reveled in the sound and textures of the full orchestra.

This creative program comes to us from German soprano Anna Prohaska. In this endeavor, Anna follows the queens of Egypt and Carthage, (Dido and Cleopatra), across first century Europe. The works featured on this release come from the biggest names in Baroque names, like Cavalli, Handel, Purcell, and Hasse, as well as lesser known composers such as Graupner and Castrovillari. These opera arias are all virtuosic and passionate, and Prohaska delivers them with a fervor that has solidified her reputation in the world of opera. This is the first in a series of releases that will be recorded by Anna Prohaska. For this release, she is joined by Il Giardino Armonico - one of today’s most accomplished Baroque ensembles. The ensemble is directed by Giovanni Antonini, who is also heard as a recorder soloist in some of these arias. Anna Prohaska is a leading star in her native Germany. She has sung on the world’s finest opera stages, including La Scala and Covent Garden.

Alex Vizorek revisits Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals. The French composer never imagined that his bestiary would become one of the most famous works in musical history, a staple repertory piece on a par with Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. The Belgian comedian and actor has rewritten the text of this ‘grand zoological fantasy’, which he narrates here alongside Duo Jatekok and the Orchestre National de Lille under the direction of Lucie Leguay. The work’s ‘crazy and poetic drollery’ takes in the ‘Royal March of the Lion’, the ‘Hens and Cocks’, the mysterious ‘Hemiones’, the motley procession of ‘Turtles’, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Kangaroos’, the famous ‘Aquarium’ which gave the Cannes Festival its signature tune, and of course the celebrated ‘Swan’. ‘When human beings keep their distance, animals are happy’, concludes Alex Vizorek. To celebrate the centenary of Saint-Saëns’s death in 1921, Duo Jatekok also presents another of his biggest hits, the Danse macabre, in its version for two pianos. Naïri Badal and Adélaïde Panaget, the orchestra and Lucie Leguay bring this colorful parade to a close with Poulenc’s flamboyant Concerto for Two Pianos, premiered at the Tenth Venice Biennale in 1932.

Looking forward to the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Haydn in 2032, the Joseph Haydn Stiftung Foundation of Basel has joined forces with the Alpha label to make a complete recording of the composer’s 107 symphonies. This ambitious project is placed under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, who will share the recordings between his ensemble Il Giardino Armonico and the Basel Chamber Orchestra, which he conducts regularly. The aim is to celebrate one of the most significant and prolific composers in the history of music, who left us a rich oeuvre of more than three hundred works. Seeing the music of Haydn as ‘a kaleidoscope of the human emotions,’ Giovanni Antonini has decided to tackle the symphonies not in chronological order, but in thematically based programmes. Moreover, the Italian conductor believes it is important to establish links between these works and pieces written by other composers contemporary with Haydn of in some way connected with him. Hence, alongside his symphonies, each volume will include music by figures like Gluck, Porpora, CPE Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Michael Haydn. Beyond its status as a unique recording venture, Haydn 2032 will also bring together leading European concert halls, which will present these programmes to their audiences. From one season to another, the artists involved in the project will breathe new life into the music of this multifaceted composer for thousands of concertgoers in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy. The present release is the fourth installment in this illustrious series.

Although Dandrieu is best-known for his talents as an organist, his trio sonatas deserve a prominent position in the chamber music of the period. They show a stunning mastery of style and variety of characters. Dances overflowing with energy, mischievous and impetuous counterpoint between the three parts, movements with highly expressive Italianate suspensions, articulation, phrasing, rhythm, gentleness, passion - in a word, life. He published them under the title Premier �uvre in 1705, when he was twenty-three years old, our own age when we first met and played these sonatas: "Opus 1" was therefore a natural choice as the title for this album!' say the members of Le Consort. 'The trio sonata was created in the second half of the seventeenth century and CORELLI, the master of the genre, helped to diffuse it throughout Europe. Dandrieu's trio sonatas are marked by CORELLI's influence. And when he calls one of his harpsichord pieces "La CORELLI", he indicates himself as an heir to the great Italian maestro... We have arranged this piece as a sonata a tre.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's 'Les sonates du Rosaire,' performed by Patrick Bismuth and Ensemble La Tempesta.

Alpha is now reissuing three recordings from its back catalogue, the first album is of the conductor Teodor Currentzis. An opportunity to discover or rediscover three very different styles, and three facets of the talen tof ''the enfant terrible of classical music'', as Le Figaro called him, for whom ''music is intended to transport into the waking world the sentiments we feel when we dream''. With their invitation to travel through different periods and territories, these reissues may be appreciated both separately and as a triptych revealing the artistic approach of Teodor Currentzis and his ensemble MusicAeterna, from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 by way of Mozart's Requiem, the Salzburg composer's last work, here given an invigorating reinterpretation.

The German soprano Juliane Banse has sung the Lieder of Brahms, Schubert, Wolf, Ullmann, Strauss, Schumann, Loewe and Berg, earning a reputation for both the quality of her interpretations and the warmth of her timbre. She and her regular partner Martin Helmchen, who has just joined Alpha, have chosen to record Paul Hindemith’s song cycle Das Marienleben, composed in 1923 and revised by the composer in 1948. The piece is a bewitching, sometimes disturbing cycle whose texts, taken from the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, retrace the life of the Virgin Mary. Fifteen poems, fifteen episodes tinged with mysticism and lyricism. They proved to be the ideal inspiration for Hindemith, whose compositional style here draws on both the power of Wagner’s operas and the subtle nuances of Debussy.

Alpha is now reissuing three recordings from its back catalogue, the first album is of the conductor Teodor Currentzis. An opportunity to discover or rediscover three very different styles, and three facets of the talen tof ''the enfant terrible of classical music'', as Le Figaro called him, for whom ''music is intended to transport into the waking world the sentiments we feel when we dream''. With their invitation to travel through different periods and territories, these reissues may be appreciated both separately and as a triptych revealing the artistic approach of Teodor Currentzis and his ensemble MusicAeterna, from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 14 by way of Mozart's Requiem, the Salzburg composer's last work, here given an invigorating reinterpretation.

Formed in 1994 at the Royal College of Music in London, the Belcea Quartet has recorded the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Brahms, Bartók and Britten. For this new Alpha release the ensemble has chosen two works by one of the leading composers of twentieth-century chamber music, Dmitri Shostakovich. The Quartet no.3, of historic importance, was initially censured by the Soviet regime, then revised by Shostakovich for its first performance in 1946; the refined playing of the Belcea Quartet brings out all of the piece's contours. The Piano Quintet is among its composer’s most famous works and significantly contributed to his success on the international scene and with the Soviet authorities. The Belcea Quartet performs it in the company of the Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski: the result is a musical encounter at the highest level of excellence.

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REVIEWS:

The Belcea Quartet’s first Shostakovich release offers much food for thought. Their insightful performance of the Third Quartet fully encapsulates the work’s war-scarred anguish. Anderszewski works miracles with Shostakovich’s often spare two-part piano writing, bringing out a greater wealth of colours than is normally the case.

– BBC Music Magazine

They look at the Quintet with fresh eyes and that is evident from the outset. The pianist’s opening soliloquy has power and a directness of emotion, which is matched by the Belcea. The Third String Quartet is every bit as successful. The absolute certainty of ensemble is one of the joys of the Belcea, but just as important is their fearlessness, and their reactivity, capturing the music’s emotional shifts unerringly. A tremendous addition to the Shostakovich discography.

–Gramophone

There are 24 Odes and Welcome Songs composed by Purcell between 1680 and 1695: 4 celebrate St Cecilia, 6 are to welcome royalty, 3 celebrate King James II’s birthday and 6 celebrate that of Queen Mary (from 1684 to 1694). The others were written for specific events – royal wedding, Yorkshire festival, Duke of Gloucester’s birthday, hundredth anniversary of Dublin’s Trinity College, etc. For these occasions, Purcell composed incredibly imaginative music of amazing quality – often keeping his most beautiful pieces for less remarkable texts, most of the time conventionally obsequious when it came to royalty. According to the registers, the number of singers and musicians were surprisingly small during special events. Purcell’s most elaborate Odes (namely Come Ye sons of Art and Hail! bright Cecilia) seem to have been designed for about twelve instruments and four singers, for solos and choruses. The Banquet Céleste chose a chamber music-like spirit for these extremely expressive and musical works.

FAURÉ Cello Sonatas No. 1 & 2. Romance. Elégie. Sérénade. Papillon. Berceuse. Clarinet Trio, op. 120 1 • François Salque (vc); Éric Le Sage (pn); 1 Paul Meyer (cl) • ALPHA 600 (74:02)


Here we have the type of recital that has almost disappeared from the face of the earth: quintessentially French performances of quintessentially French music. As an analogy, I should also point out that quintessentially German, Italian, Austrian, Dutch, and British performances have also faded to a precious few. The standardization of both instrumental style and sound has, by and large, imposed a generically pretty but nationally ambiguous style and sound on orchestras, solo musicians, and chamber groups the world over. Heck, we even have a hard enough time coming up with a quintessentially American sound anymore.


But Éric Le Sage and François Salque are indeed throwbacks to at least the 1940s. Salque’s cello avoids the generically rich, dark sort of timbre one hears from most such players the world over nowadays, but has rather a lean, edgy sonority not unlike Pierre Fournier. This does not mean that Salque’s low range lacks depth of tone, just that it’s not a basso profundo sound; it’s more like a basso cantate, which is fine by me. Likewise, Le Sage’s piano plays with light and shade, color and nuance, in a way that, fortunately, has never entirely disappeared from the lexicon of French pianists on record, from Cortot to Thibaudet.


Thus these performances reach inside the music not just in terms of emotional response but also in terms of coloristic response. They do not lack for energy or excitement when the music calls for it, even in such a piece as the op. 69 Romance, yet despite a CD cover that is almost completely black with white and blood-red lettering, their playing is a virtual rainbow. Some modern listeners, more used to the plush generic quality of many musicians nowadays, may find this approach foreign to them or difficult to comprehend, but as the expression goes, “this is the real deal.” As good as the recording of mostly the same music by cellist Ina-Esther Joost Ben-Sasson is (Naxos 8570545), my decision in favor of this release is predicated by exactly the virtues (or, if you prefer, idiosyncrasies) mentioned in the second paragraph. I should also add that Paul Meyer manages to fit in very well indeed in the performance of the Clarinet Trio. You simply can’t sing Italian comic patter like an Italian, you can’t conduct Má Vlast as well as a Czech-born conductor can, and you can’t play French music any better than the French do it.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

When Henry Madin’s Te Deum for the victories of Louis XV was performed in the Chapelle Royale at Versailles in 2015, it was the first time it had been performed since its premiere in the eighteenth century. Reviving this work for the modern day is Stradivaria, the Baroque ensemble of Nantes, and Les Cris de Paris, the latter two conducted by Daniel Cuiller and Geoffroy Jourdain, respectively. Along with Te Deum, this album also features Madin’s Diligam te, Domine, a grand motet for large chorus.