This album celebrates dance music, from waltz to tango, from slow foxtrot to quickstep, from samba to jive. Seventy years of music rooted in the 1920s, assembled by the enthusiastic musicians of the Ludwig Orchestra, who have taken to playing them at festivals, alongside their usual programs devoted to Stravinsky or Schoenberg, to get the audience dancing – a phenomenal success story that now becomes an album, Dance with me!

For this project, the Ludwig musicians naturally turned to a partner dear to their hearts, Barbara Hannigan, with whom they recorded Crazy Girl Crazy (Alpha 293), which received a Grammy Award in 2018, in collaboration with composer-arranger Bill Elliott. The trio has reformed here: ‘I was thrilled to go back to this aspect of my musical roots, to reawaken special memories of singing and playing keyboards with a dance band in Nova Scotia’, says Barbara Hannigan. ‘Couples were smiling and dancing to tunes like Moonlight Serenade and In the Mood with a few polkas thrown in towards the end of the evening.’ The Canadian soprano performs four songs, including "I could have danced all night," "Moonlight Serenade," and Kurt Weill’s famous and moving "Youkali."

More musicians round out the guest-list for the party – the trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin-Vary and the Berlage Saxophone Quartet. Dance with me: an invitation to feel happy and light-hearted, quite an achievement these days . . .

REVIEW:

The tautness of the Ludwig Orchestra’s playing – augmented in four dances by the Berlage Saxophone Quartet – echoes that of the best bands of the big band era, and the arrangements are not only effective but cleverly detailed.

-- Gramophone

This recording provides an opportunity to discover a forgotten Baroque operatic treasure: a zarzuela, the key dramatic and musical genre of the Spanish Golden Age. Sumptuous choruses, poignant arias, and folksongs blend in a rich and spectacular narrative, whose music was falsely attributed to Antonio Literes before Sebastián Durón (1660-1716) was acknowledged as its composer in 2009! Another peculiarity of the work is that it is sung by seven sopranos, who are even given the roles of Apollo, Neptune and the monster Triton. Only the part of an old man, the seer Proteus, is assigned to a tenor. Ana Quintans in the title role, Isabelle Druet, Anthea Pichanick, Caroline Meng, and Cyril Auvity are among the cast of this colorful zarzuela, whose modern stage premiere in 2019 enjoyed great success.

Johan Farjot’s music prolongs the inner resonances of David Tepfer’s beautiful poems, dealing with the frissons and sorrows of love. On the road to the eighty-eight temples of the Japanese island of Shikoku, the piano of Johan Farjot or David Kadouch, with the complicity of Geneviève Laurenceau on violin, Arnaud Thorette on viola and Mathilde Calderini on flute, opens out a kaleidoscope of emotions served by the magnificent voices of Sandrine Piau, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Delphine Haidan, Ambroisine Bré, Jeanne Gérard, with a guest appearance by Rosemary Standley.

Johan Farjot explains: "This is a polyglot project that corresponds to my aesthetic standpoint, influenced by American music (the minimalists and Aaron Copland, whose soundscapes are there in the background). But my music still bears the imprint of the French school and I am at ease with that tonal heritage, now that the war between 'atonalism' and 'tonalism' is behind us."

Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater has enjoyed enormous fame ever since the eighteenth century – Jean-Jacques Rousseau called its first movement ‘the most perfect and touching that has ever come from the pen of any composer’. There were many arrangements of the work, by Bach among others. It was performed more than eighty times at the Concert Spirituel in Paris between 1753 and 1790, in multiple versions, probably also with the participation of a choir.

After consulting several manuscripts and editions held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Julien Chauvin has chosen to record it with soprano and mezzo soloists (the equivalent of the French dessus and bas-dessus) and a two-part children’s choir: ‘The choir can play a real role in the narration of so powerful and poignant a text’, he says. This recording teams two emblematic singers of the Alpha label with the excellent Maîtrise de Radio France, of which Adèle was a member as a girl. To complement the Neapolitan masterpiece, we have a ‘sacred’ symphony by Haydn, "La Passione," probably written for Good Friday and in the same key as the Stabat.

One of the New York Times' 5 Classical Albums to Hear Now!

Hypnos, God of Sleep . . . Simon-Pierre Bestion’s recordings are often inspired by his desire to recreate a ritual. His aim here was to recreate a Requiem service, ‘the ceremony that accompanies the passage of a human being into the hereafter, while supporting the feelings of all who witness it. Making use of all the freedom that this act of re-creation afforded me, I constructed this program without boundaries between repertories or different musical aesthetics – from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance to the twentieth century – selecting the works for their captivating musical material, their hypnotic and meditative dimension’. Intonations from Byzantine chant sit alongside guttural voices in Giacinto Scelsi and the English vocal style of John Tavener; Franco-Flemish Renaissance polyphony encounters the influences of eastern or western spiritual traditions present in the contemporary works.

This is Lucile Boulanger’s first solo recital. The French gambist, universally praised for her natural and moving playing – BBC Music Magazine even described her as ‘the Jacqueline du Pré of the viola da gamba’ – juxtaposes Bach with Carl Friedrich Abel, a great master of the bass viol and a close friend of the Bach family. Although Johann Sebastian never wrote for solo viola da gamba, we know that he transcribed many of his works for other instruments. So Lucile Boulanger has chosen, for example, to transcribe three dances from the Sixth Suite, ‘because it sounds particularly good on the viol, being written for five-stringed cello (a step towards the six or seven strings of the viol?). It is in D, the viol key par excellence, and its style, already somewhat galant, is reminiscent of Abel… This album gives me the opportunity to showcase the viol as both a melodic instrument – with the grain of the bow, the fragility of tone – and a polyphonic one.’

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.

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Mikko Franck continue their collaboration with Alpha Classics and here invite the Maîtrise and Chœur de Radio France to join them in a Debussy program. This recording couples La Damoiselle élue, a work described by the composer as a ‘little oratorio in a mystical and somewhat pagan vein’, the Nocturnes for orchestra, composed between 1897 and 1899, and the ’symphonic fragments’ from Le Martyre de saint Sébastien fashioned by André Caplet less than a year after the work’s first performance, and which ensured it would not be forgotten by posterity.

This ten-album set celebrates the release of the first ten volumes of the HAYDN2032 series, which aims to record all 107 Haydn symphonies by the 300th anniversary of his birth in 2032. This highly ambitious project under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini is shared between two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico and Kammerorchester Basel. Its first volumes have received the most prestigious awards, including the Gramophone Award, the Diapason d’Or, the ‘Choc’ de Classica of the year and the Preis der Deustchen Schallplattenkritik. Produced in collaboration with the Joseph Haydn Foundation in Basel, this series pays tribute to one of the key composers in the history of music, whose inventiveness and emotional richness are nevertheless underestimated all too often. Antonini places his enthusiasm and sense of colour at the service of this music, which he sees as ‘a kaleidoscope of human emotions’.

Handel is one of Sandrine Piau’s cult composers, and everyone has vivid memories of her magnificent Alcina on DVD (ALPHA715): ‘Where once I portrayed light-hearted, pirouetting heroines, this new album offers a portrait of powerful, often wounded women.’. . . ‘Queens, sorceresses, sirens . . . we were attracted by the musical and emotional intensity of the hopes, disappointments and sufferings of these women, not forgetting the malice or cruelty that they also know how to deploy’, continues Jérôme Correas, the soprano’s longstanding musical partner and conductor of Les Paladins. With Almirena, Cleopatra and Alcina, Handel explores all the facets of these defeated heroines, whose boldly delineated characters live once more in Sandrine Piau’s passionate interpretation.

Includes arias from:

Lotario | Rinaldo | Giulio Cesare | Alcina | Amadigi di Gaula | O numi eterni

Plus movements from the Concerti grossi

REVIEW:

Sandrine Piau, not English and not even Italian, is arguably the greatest Handelian soprano of the day. She gets excellent support from the smooth historical performance group Les Paladins. She and director Jérôme Correas mesh beautifully. This all comes down to a magnificent artist at the top of her powers.

-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

With these sonatas by C.P.E. Bach, François Lazarevitch continues the exploration of the jewels of the flute and recorder repertory he has embarked on with Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien or as a soloist with recordings of music by Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and van Eyck. François Lazarevitch and Justin Taylor now bring their sensitivity and virtuosity to bear on the sonatas for flute and obbligato harpsichord of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach.

The majority of these works date from the years 1745-66, when he was in the service of the flute-playing King Frederick II. Two solos complete the program: the famous Sonata in A minor for unaccompanied flute and the Fantasia in F# minor for keyboard, which testifies to Emanuel’s improvisational artistry.

Situated at the epicenter of the Enlightenment era, Bach’s second son was the key figure of Empfindsamkeit (Sensibility), the movement that explored the deep and unfathomable stirrings of humanity and nature, countering the learned style of the early eighteenth-century masters with freedom of inspiration and hence emancipation of form. The artist now sought above all to express the impulses of the soul, displaying unexpected traits that sometimes verge on the bizarre.

The basic idea of this album was to play in threes… Not to play 'something', but to experiment 'in threes' with sound worlds as different as those of Bartók, Poulenc and Schoenfield. With his Contrastes, composed in 1938 for Benny Goodman, Bartók broadened his penchant for traditional music and turned it into a more universal work, influenced by jazz. Poulenc was a child of the Paris of the Roaring Twenties, influenced as much by Stravinsky, Ravel and Satie as by cabaret songs and operetta. Paul Schoenfield, born in Detroit in 1947, also likes to combine styles. Each of the movements in his trio is based on an Eastern European Hasidic melody… not forgetting the breathtaking klezmer dances of Romanian Șerban Nichifor. Almost ten years after Take 2 (Alpha211), Patricia Kopatchinskaja reunites with two great accomplices, clarinettist Reto Bieri and pianist Polina Leschenko, for a programme based around trios that celebrate the roots of these three musicians.

In the seventeenth century, the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice took in young orphan girls who received advanced musical instruction. The concerts given there attracted visitors from all over the world, curious to hear these divine voices which remained invisible, since the girls performed hidden behind the grilles of the chapel gallery. Vivaldi became Maestro de’ Concerti of the Pietà in 1714, and it was his pupils who performed his famous Nisi Dominus. Today they are succeeded by the mezzo-soprano Eva Zaïcik, who brings out the full poignancy of the aria ‘Cum dederit’. Another motet by Vivaldi, Invicti bellate, also composed for the Pietà, features in this program planned and conducted by Vincent Dumestre. He invites us on a musical journey centered on the figure of woman and on divine praise, with composers awaiting discovery such as Serafino Razzi (1534-1619) and Soto de Langa (1531-1611).

Soprano Anna Prohaska and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja are both well known for their taste for eclecticism, experimentation and adventure. As they are also are friends, it was only to be expected that one day they would devise and record a programme together, and here it is: Maria Mater Meretrix … What is the relationship between Hildegard von Bingen and Gustav Holst, Antonio Caldara and Lili Boulanger? The two musicians and their partners in Camerata Bern explore the image of woman through ten centuries of music: the figure of the Virgin Mary – among other works, the triptych Magnificat - Ave Maria - Stabat Mater (1967/68) by Frank Martin, an unclassifiable composer whom both artists venerate – but also Mary Magdalene, in pieces by Caldara and Kurtág. The Saint, the Mother, the Whore … The expression of two women musicians of today, a journey full of meaning and a sensory exploration featuring solos, duets, quartets and works for large orchestra.

REVIEWS:

Here’s a fun proposition. A program comprising works depicting either the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene through time, conceived of and executed with flair by the soprano Anna Prohaska and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Both are thoughtful, entirely game musicians, and their passion for the concept and material is evident.

Taking as their theme the archetypes of saint, mother, and whore, Prohaska and Kopatchinskaja traverse many periods and styles in their exploration of the two Marys: Holst, Eisler, von Bingen, Kurtág, and Haydn are just some of the composers jostling for your attention. Undoubtedly the risk for some listeners will be an experience that verges on the musical patchwork, and for some Maria Mater Meretrix is easily dismissed as just another concept album. For this reviewer, the particular alchemy of Prohaska and Kopatchinskaja override any such reservations, and some of the works gathered here are given truly revelatory readings.

Take Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments for one, selections of which are threaded through the track list. They pack a punch despite – or is it because of? – their lengths (the Berceuse lasts all of 59 seconds) and leave you wanting more: more of the composer’s spectral, exquisitely simple settings of Kafka’s diaries and letters, and more of the musicians’ seemingly inherent way with the music.

The spine of the recording is Frank Martin’s Maria-Triptychon, which is similarly taken apart and studded throughout the album. This is another move that won’t agree with some listeners, and the contrast between a selection and its preceding or succeeding piece is sometimes a little too jarring to be entirely fruitful. However, there’s no faulting the commitment of the performers – Prohaska bends and wields her darkly-coloured, rich soprano with feline ease, and Kopatchinskaja matches her with her own glowing, sinuous phrasing. Together they bring to life an emotional world alternating between moments of extreme desperation and rapture, reaching such a pitch of intensity that the more tranquil offerings on the album actually serve as much needed and effective moments of respite.

Hildegard von Bingen’s O Rubor Sanguinis is one such example, drawing the listener into a richly imagistic world of great beauty. The closing “Per il mar del pianto mio” is another such example, taken from a Caldara oratorio that deals directly with Mary Magdalene – Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo. Prohaska is simply gorgeous here, unfurling seemingly endless long lines of deeply felt sorrow and hard-won faith. Her unstinting dramatic instincts have never seemed so in tune with her musical gifts, and she brings something like Eisler’s sly, cabaret-tinged “Lied der Kupplerin” to bold, brilliant life.

Directing the sensitive and dramatically attuned Camerata Bern, Kopatchinskaja thrills in electrifying selections from Haydn’s Seven Last Words and the God-Music movement of George Crumb’s spine-tingling Black Angels string quartet. The violinist’s own improvisatory Felino is a playful nod to the prominent role of cats in Marian imagery.

This recording comes highly recommended.

-- Limelight

The fifteenth volume of the Haydn2032 cycle is entitled ‘La Reine’. One might think that this nickname refers to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, queen of numerous territories, but in fact the monarch honoured by the popular title of Symphony no.85 is her daughter, Marie Antoinette. It was said to be the favourite of ‘La Reine de France’, which is the full nickname of the work. The new volume also includes Symphony no.50, which delighted the Empress’s ears when she visited Prince Nicolaus Esterházy at his ‘Hungarian Versailles’ in 1773. Symphony no.62, which dates from 1780, the fortieth anniversary of Maria Theresa’s accession to the throne and also the last year of a life as eventful as it was glorious, rounds off this latest instalment of the complete recording of the symphonies conducted by Giovanni Antonini, here at the helm of the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

'Joseph Haydn not only liked surprising his audiences, he also enjoyed a laugh', writes Christian Moritz-Bauer in the introduction to this sixteenth volume of the Haydn2032 complete recording of the symphonies. Take, for instance, the false conclusion of Symphony No. 90, composed in 1788: the music seems to have reached the last chord but, after a pause, the movement resumes to end with a powerful coda. Another example of Haydn's mischievous wit is the famous Andante 'with the drumstroke' that forms the 'surprise' of Symphony No. 94, a fortissimo chord designed to wake up audiences who dozed off towards the end of his concerts... In this volume focused on humour, Giovanni Antonini pays tribute to a great admirer of Haydn, Gioachino Rossini, by recording the sparkling opening Sinfonia of La scala di seta (The silken ladder), a one-act opera written in 1812.

The fourteenth volume of the Haydn 2032 edition is entitled L'Imperiale, after the nickname given to Symphony no.53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn's most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterháza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and its melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn’s success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony no.54, whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterháza around 1775, completes this programme along with no.33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the ‘capricious’, whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.

The fourteenth volume of the Haydn2032 edition is entitled L'Imperiale, after the nickname given to Symphony No. 53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn's most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterhaza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and it's melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn's success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony No. 54, whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterhaza around 1775, completes this programme along with No. 33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the 'capricious', whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.

The Esterházy princes’ love of hunting prompted their ‘house composer’ Joseph Haydn to make extensive use of the horn. At the time, this was still the hand horn (Waldhorn), limited to ‘natural’ harmonics, since it did not yet have valves. Between 1761 and 1790 there were a total eighteen horn players in princely service, but no trumpeters! So, in his Symphony no.48 of 1769, for example, Haydn used the horns as ‘replacement trumpets’, instructing them to play an octave higher than usual. The horns strike a flamboyant note in Haydn’s symphonies, which is probably why an anonymous copyist of no.59 dubbed it the ‘Fire’ Symphony. The Symphony no.31 ‘Horn Signal’ (1765) gives its name to this thirteenth volume in the Haydn2032 Edition. The four horns ring out majestically and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico perform this music in their characteristically impetuous style, under the fiery direction of Giovanni Antonini.

Haydn's Symphony No. 31 from 1765, known as the 'Horn Signal', lends it's name to this 13th volume of the Haydn 2032 series. Not only does the symphony feature four horns in their full majesty, but the entire ensemble of Il Giardino Armonico, directed with ardour by Giovanni Antonini, perform this music with characteristic impetuousness. The numbered vinyl recording that accompanies this volume includes a musicological introduction, a CD of the same programme, and a download code (like every vinyl release in the Haydn 2032 series). This particular volume also includes a catalogue of all the recordings already released and gives us another opportunity to admire the images taken by the photographers of the Magnum agency, our partner from the outset of the series.

The twelfth volume in the Haydn 2032 series, in which Giovanni Antonini conducts the Kammerorchester Basel, is devoted to ‘games and pleasures’. The symphonies recorded here, nos. 61, 66 and 69, were composed for the daily theatrical performances held at Eszterháza Palace in the spring of 1776. For Haydn they marked the end of a festive period, before he had to return to the serious business of writing operas. The ‘Toy Symphony’, attributed to Haydn for 200 years before it was discovered that it was in all probability composed by a Benedictine monk, completes the program in a similarly light and cheerful atmosphere.

This programme focuses on fantasy and pleasure, with three symphonies punctuated by lightness and wit. In addition to ten photos by Magnum photographer Cristina Garcia Rodero, a literary text that appears exclusively on the vinyl edition of the series provides a continuation of the musical experience. Philippe Claudel, President of the Academie Goncourt, here focuses on the pleasure and sensuality of a fleeting youthful encounter: "The third movement of the symphony accompanies us towards the taut velvet of the great lime trees. We are no longer walking through life. We tread upon a dream. And music gives this dream the profundity of legend. [...] I experience my own mythology in this May evening. We lie on the lawn. Our eyes search for each other in the darkness. Our pupils are stars cast into the lofty skies of May. I am not fifteen. I am no longer fifteen. This does not mean anything. Time does not exist."

The eleventh volume of the complete HAYDN2032 symphony cycle moves its focus to Paris: ‘Every day one perceives more clearly, and consequently admires more, the productions of this great genius, who, in every one of his works, knows so well how to draw rich and varied developments from a single subject’, wrote the Mercure de France in April 1788, adding that Haydn was ‘quite different from those sterile composers who constantly move from one idea to another . . .’. The symphonies presented here are no.2 (the first to be published in France), no.24 (the first to be performed there) and the so-called ‘Paris’ symphonies nos. 87 and 82 ‘L’Ours’, with its references to fairground atmosphere and its famous contredanse finale.

The eleventh volume of the complete HAYDN2032 symphony cycle moves it's focus to Paris: 'Every day one perceives more clearly, and consequently admires more, the productions of this great genius, who, in every one of his works, knows so well how to draw rich and varied developments from a single subject', wrote the Mercure de France in April 1788, adding that Haydn was 'quite different from those sterile composers who constantly move from one idea to another...'. The symphonies presented here are no.2 (the first to be published in France), No. 24 (the first to be performed there) and the so-called 'Paris' symphonies Nos. 87 and 82 'L'Ours', with it's references to fairground atmosphere and it's famous contredanse finale. This limited and numbered edition contains two vinyl LPs along with an album of photos by Jean Gaumy (Magnum Photos) and a magnificent unpublished text entitled How I could talk about Joseph Haydn... by the writer Hanns-Josef Ortheil.

This ninth volume of the Haydn 2032 series focuses on the composer’s psychological subtlety in its focus on a central work: his Symphony no.45, known as the ‘Abschieds-Symphonie’ (‘Farewell’ Symphony), composed in 1772. It is said to have got its nickname from a symbolic message Haydn conveyed to Prince Esterházy when he and his orchestra were required to stay longer than planned in the Prince’s summer residence. On the occasion of the symphony’s first performance, Haydn had arranged for the musicians to leave their places one by one during the final Adagio. The day after the concert, all the musicians were able to return to their families and bid farewell to the Prince, who had obviously taken the point of this poetic request for ‘liberation’ expressed in music. The programme is completed by Symphonies nos. 15 and 35 and a cantata sung by Sandrine Piau, the heart-rending ‘Berenice, che fai?’ on a text by Metastasio that was a real ‘hit’ of the eighteenth century, set by some forty composers. This limited and numbered edition contains two vinyl LPs along with an album of photos by Patrick Zachmann (Magnum Photos) and an unpublished text entitled Adieux by the Swiss writer Franz Hohler.