The pianist Martin Helmchen has now joined Alpha for several recordings. Acknowledged as one of the leading pianists of his generation, an eminent interpreter of the German repertoire, Helmchen will explore various periods and composers (including Messiaen!), but Beethoven will have a preponderant place in his forthcoming recording projects. Before the complete concertos, planned for 2020, he tackles the Diabelli Variations, ‘a climax in the life of a pianist’. He sees these variations as ‘a voyage to the very heart of the infinity of human feelings and moods, by turns profound, philosophical, satirical’. He regards the cycle as a visionary work that heralds future developments in music, containing the first stirrings of twentieth-century minimalism, atonality and abstraction. This recording is the end result of a long personal association and numerous concerts; a powerful version in which each variation emerges as a masterpiece in its own right.

Composed in 1944 and first performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 26 March 1945 by Yvonne Loriod, this is the second great pianistic cycle by Olivier Messiaen: a major work indeed, not only in the composer's oeuvre but in the entire repertoire for solo piano. As we know, it's origin is in the faith and spirituality of Olivier Messiaen, who described it as: 'The Contemplation of the Child-God in the cradle, and the gazes fixed upon Him: from the inexpressible Gaze of God the Father to the multiple Gaze of the Church of love, also taking in the unheard Gaze of the Spirit of joy, the tender Gaze of the Virgin, of the Angels, of the Magi, and of those creatures that are immaterial or symbolic (Time, Extreme Height, Silence, the Star, the Cross).' He continues: 'It is a complex of sounds destined for perpetual variations, pre-existing in the abstract as a series, but very concrete and easy to recognize by their colours: a steely grey-blue traversed by bright red and orange, a mauve-tinted violet spotted with leather-brown and encircled in deep purple.' The vision of this work transmitted by Martin Helmchen - a great piano virtuoso who is himself marked by a strong sense of spirituality - is another substantial contribution to the Messiaenic monument.

After a Bach album, the tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen and his ensemble A Nocte Temporis present a programme of French music devoted to Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749), a precociously gifted composer who published four volumes comprising a total of twenty-one cantatas. Reinoud van Mechelen offers us an anthology of these Cantates Françoises – Le Jaloux with its final air ‘Dieu des Amants’, Apollon, L’Amour guéri par l’amour and Pirasme et Thisbé (based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses) – set as a succession of recitatives, airs and simphonies, as in a tragédie lyrique. The young Flemish tenor, now aged thirty, pursues an intensive solo career with the leading Baroque conductors (Christie, Pichon, Niquet) but is also keen to develop his personal projects and his ensemble: ‘I’m a purist but without elitism. Music has to appeal to people. Perhaps that requires them to make an effort and depends on different criteria from the somewhat sensationalist criteria of society, politics and money. But music must be more than a simple distraction, and many people actually want it that way’, he told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir in 2017, when the Prix Caecilia named him ‘Artist of the Year’.

Classical Music

The Quatuor Voce, which recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, follows up its two recordings of Mozart with Juliette Hurel (Alpha 204) and Brahms with Lise Berthaud (Alpha 214) by inviting us on a journey to central Europe. The three works recorded here were written over a period of twenty years. Two of them allude to their composer’s love lives. Bartók’s First Quartet might be seen as Beethoven’s Quartet no.17. The intense opening Lento is a lyric-dramatic movement that transposes an unhappy experience of love. No previous quartet had come so close to the Beethovenian ideal. Janácek’s Second Quartet reflects his love for Kamila Stösslová, and is a faithful mirror of emotions in all their spontaneous and constantly shifting authenticity. Schulhoff was one of the first Jewish composers to fall victim to Nazi barbarity. Inventive, omnivorously curious, he was a virtuoso pianist who performed both jazz and serial music. His Five Pieces consist of a suite of dances in different styles, successively Alla Valse viennese, Alla Serenata, Alla Czeca, Alla Tango milonga and Alla Tarantella.

Waterfalls and cascades, gushing fountains, canals, pools, grottoes and lily ponds, miroirs d'eau calmly reflecting the light: the water displays at Versailles are as varied as the secrets of its groves. They express the genius of the landscape architect Le Nôtre, who wanted water features and sculptures to decorate and animate the gardens he designed. For thirty years, Versailles and its gardens were expressions of the king's power and of his tastes. Louis would go out walking in the park each day, building up his dream, and even before the palace was furnished, the layout of the walks and groves was a constant priority. At Versailles we find Apollo, the sun god, riding his chariot amidst the spray, Neptune, the god of water and the sea, unleashing a storm, Enceladus punished for challenging Jupiter, the king of the gods...ancient mythology is used to express the greatness of Louis XIV. And the visitor today has the extraordinary experience of following an itinerary, punctuated by 'water effects', that was chosen by the sovereign himself. Fouquet, the king's former minister of finance, who spent the last years of his life in prison, was unable to believe that water would ever reach Versailles: 'Comment étaient les grandes eaux à cette fête du roi?' (How were the grandes eaux at the king's celebration?), he asks disparagingly and with resentment in Paul Morand's novel of 1961. The king watned water to be everywhere, and it is still everywhere to this day. The Grandes Eaux - when all the fountains are working - was Louis XIV's dream. Accompanied by music that was heard at Versailles for two hundred years, the event reflects the celebrations of centuries past. Sometimes, on summer evenings, lights, laster systems and fireworks are used to make the magic of the gardens even more bewitching. Entertainments organized in the gardens by Château de Versailles Spectacles take into consideration the original intentions of the Sun King and his artists. The gardens have been extensively restored. The Latona Basin has recovered its original splendor in 2015, when the Bosquet du Théâtre d’Eau (the Water Theatre grove) is also brought back to life, in a reinterpretation by Louis Benech and Jean-Michel Othoniel. The magic is perpetuated!

ISTANPITTA: Dances of 14th Century Florence

FRANCOEUR: Chamber Music

Firenze 1616

YEDID NEFESH - Judaeo-Spanish Poems and Prayers Songs based

Bach: Concerts avec plusieurs instruments IV

DOWLAND / PHILIPS / FERRABOSCO / BYRD / COPERARIO / MORLEY:

GRARE: Follow / Fugitives / Koan

CACCINI / MINISCALCHI / RADESCA / STROZZI: Madrigals and Son

L'Astree: Musiques d'apres le roman d'Honore d'Urfe