CHOPIN Ballades: No. 1 in g; No. 2 in F; No. 3 in A?; No. 4 in f. Nocturnes: No. 1 in b?; No. 2 in E?; No. 3 in B; No. 20a in c?. Prelude No. 25 in c? • Arthur Schoonderwoerd (pn) (period instrument) • ALPHA 147 (61:49)


There are two factors that set Arthur Schoonderwoerd’s Chopin disc apart from most others, and their importance is likely to vary significantly depending on your point of view. First, the four ballades are separated by individual nocturnes and preceded by a single prelude, the idea suggested in the notes being that the temporary change to smaller forms helps to reset the ears in preparation for the more complex and formally idiosyncratic ballades. Second, the instrument on the disc is not a modern concert grand, but an instrument contemporaneous with the composer, fashioned by Ignace Pleyel in 1839.


Schoonderwoerd’s accounts of these classics are marked by slower tempos and less rhythmic flexibility than those of most other pianists. The dynamic range is also narrower than what we are accustomed to, although this trait could be the result of his choice of the Pleyel keyboard. The instrument might also be at least partly responsible for his relatively intimate readings, a characteristic that is often quite fetching in lower dynamic levels but is less convincing in grander moments.


This emphasis on metric clarity over excessive rubato is especially noteworthy in the Fourth Ballade, which begins with a waltz almost steady enough in pulse to serve as accompaniment to a dance. The G-Minor Ballade is the slowest I’ve heard, rivaled in length only by Krystian Zimerman among major pianists on disc. His patience can be frustrating at times, lending a certain cautious calculation to music that benefits from at least a measure of impetuosity and an illusion of risk. On the other hand, there is a clarity to textures and rhythms that can be quite illuminating, even if momentum tends to be in short supply.


The four nocturnes and the single prelude are treated with a shade more flexibility, but again somewhat less than is the current norm. Here the delicacy of the instrument pays dividends, although the reduction in sustaining sound gives these beauties a skeletal aura that may not be to everyone’s liking. Tempos are closer to standard, a wise strategy given the thinner sustainability.


My favorite recordings of the ballades (Ax, Rubenstein, and Kissin) and nocturnes (Moravec and Pollini) haven’t been supplanted by Schoonderwoerd, but his view is a legitimate one, and well worth a listen by Chopin devotees. If you have an interest in hearing this music on a keyboard from the composer’s era, all the more reason to give it a shot.


FANFARE: Michael Cameron

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.

Edouard Ferlet has already explored intriguing byways for the Alpha label: in 2015 he and Violaine Cochard recorded ‘Plucked Unplucked’, an album associating piano and harpsichord – a successful venture that will soon see a follow-up. The bassist Stephane Kerecki has already made several recordings for Outhere, including ‘Nouvelle Vague’, a prizewinner at the Victoires de la Musique. The career of the trumpet player Airelle Besson has been on a high since 2015, when she won both the Prix Django Reinhardt of the Academie du Jazz and the ‘Revelation’ Award at the Victoires du Jazz. These three jazz musicians met and decided to form a trio in order to combine their universes and their ambitions. Here is the fruit of their first year of companionship, a programme presenting compositions by each of them, an album wearing the colours of jazz but featuring several tracks directly inspired by great standards of the classical repertoire, including ‘Es ist vollbracht’ from Bach’s St John Passion, the Pavanes of Ravel and Faure, the Valse sentimentale of Tchaikovsky, and Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance, which can be recognised behind the ‘Stances du sabre’. The refinement of the compositions and the playing and the musicians’ capacity for listening to each other are a source of endless pleasure and fulfilment.

A Baroque West Side Story, Tancrède tells of the absolute but impossible love between two young people brought together by their passion but separated by their origins. • We are in the time of the Crusades: Tancredi is the champion of the Frankish army, and Clorinda the passionaria of the Saracen troops. • In the labyrinth of sentiments, sorcerer Isménor’s magic wand confuses the issues, luring the two heroes into the enchanted forest to better prepare their downfall. • With Tancrède, André Campra (1660-1744) established himself as one of the great opera composers between Lully and Rameau.

The Belgian group Vox Luminis, directed by the bass Lionel Meunier, is now acknowledged as belonging among the world’s elite vocal ensembles, especially for its interpretations of German Baroque sacred music. The group's program of Bach cantatas are among the composer’s earliest, having been written in 1707/1708. Notable among them is the poignant cantata ‘Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit’ (God’s time is the best of all times) BWV 106, also known as the ‘Actus tragicus’, which was composed by the 22-year old composer for a funeral ceremony.

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REVIEWS:

There are many beautiful moments in this program of four early cantatas by Bach. The seriousness with which Lionel Meunier and Vox Luminis approach these works is evident, and the forces are ideal.

– BBC Music Magazine

Vox Luminis live up to their name with clear, soft textures redolent of 17th-century devotional rhetoric. The single voices and instruments constitute a remarkably crystalline landscape. Emotional restraint also offers some ear-pricking moments.

– Gramophone

Les Ambassadeurs launch a series of recordings devoted to the repertory of the Dresdner Hofkapelle at the time of Bach, with the aim of rediscovering the splendid sound of an ensemble then regarded as the orchestral ideal. Although the concertos compiled by Les Ambassadeurs bear no explicit dedication to the Dresden orchestra, they feature the instrumentation typical of the court Kapelle.

In Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s catalogue, the music for solo keyboard and the chamber music occupy central positions. In his youth, Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was left-handed, did not play string instruments such as the violin or viola, but rather the harpsichord and organ (not to overlook the flute). It was as a harpsichordist that, in 1738, he joined the entourage of the future King of Prussia, Frederick II, before following him to Berlin upon his accession two years later and then formally entering his service. In 1767, he was offered the succession of his godfather, Telemann, as director of music in Hamburg. He arrived in the Hanseatic city in March 1768, and for the last twenty years of his life, it was church music that occupied much of his time and effort. The symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach are all in three movements, quite often linked without a break. Highly original and typical of north Germany, the symphonies turn their back on the style gallant, on Johann Stamitz, founder of the Mannheim School, and on the Viennese style. The Concerto in A major was originally written for harpsichord and strings, but was later transcribed for cello by the composer, likely for the cellist Christian Friedrich Schale, who hosted a Musikalische Assemblee in his Berlin home every week.

The tenor Julian Pregardien joins ALPHA for several recording projects that will showcase every facet of his talent, notably lieder and oratorio. His first album on the label is devoted to one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Winterreise, but in a version with orchestra composed by Hans Zender in 1993. He scored the work for orchestral forces very differently from the ensembles used in the nineteenth century. Hans Zender describes his work as a ‘creative transformation’: “My own reading of Winterreise does not seek a new expressive interpretation, but systematically takes advantage of the freedoms that performers normally allow themselves in an intuitive way: slowing down or accelerating the tempo, transposition into different keys, emphasizing and nuancing colors.” Following a staged production of this version of the work, Christian Merlin wrote in Le Figaro in 2018: “A spellbinding Winterreise . . . The tenor Julian Pregardien, at once an exceptional singer and a committed actor, gives an incendiary performance combining vocal expressiveness, loving attention to the words and theatrical presence with sensitivity and intelligence in equal measure.”

BACH Missa 1733 • Raphaël Pichon, cond; Eugénie Warnier (sop); Anna Reinhold (sop); Carlos Mena (alt); Emiliano Gonzalez Toro (ten); Konstantin Wolff (bs); Pygmalion • ALPHA 188 (56:57 Text and Translation)

The disc title is a bit misleading to the uninitiated—is this a newly discovered Bach Mass setting? No; it is instead the original version of the Kyrie and Gloria movements for the Mass in B Minor. The work is referred to in the booklet notes as a “fifth Missa Brevis” setting, but is on a far grander scale than those of the four Lutheran Masses, BWV 233-236. Frustrated by his continual difficulties with the Leipzig town council, Bach wrote the work to apply for a position as court composer in Dresden to Augustus III, the newly crowned Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. While the actual position went to Johann Adolf Hasse (already well established there), in 1736 Bach was belatedly granted an emeritus title, the prestige of which gave him greater leverage in his dealings with the Leipzig authorities. Upon compiling the entire B-Minor Mass in 1749, Bach made numerous minor revisions to the original versions of these movements. The rationales for this recording are thus twofold: to make available to the public this earlier version and to complete a set of “Missa Brevis” settings.

In 32:4 and 34:4 George Chien gave enthusiastic reviews to the recordings of the Lutheran Masses by the forces of Pygmalion, a combined period instrument-choral ensemble based in Paris, whose conductor Raphaël Pichon sang in ensembles under the direction of Ton Koopman and Jordi Savall. In the first of those reviews, he complained that “Unfortunately, the notes for this disc have a lot to say about Breugel the Elder’s painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels (which is not reproduced), but precious little about Pichon and/or Pygmalion.” That fault has been modestly rectified here, but unfortunately in the wrong direction. Here the digipak provides color reproductions of the subject painting for this release, the 1445 Creation and Expulsion from Paradise of Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia (1403–c.1482), including more detailed close-ups of two sections, to accompany a four-page essay devoted to it; but apart from a complete list of the instrumentalists and choral members, once again not a word is provided about the ensemble and its conductor.

Even more frustratingly, Pichon provides over eight pages of notes in which he discusses in detail the history of this Missa, the determination from historical evidence of the size of forces to employ for his recording, numerous details about interpretive decisions with respect to tempos, phrasing, articulation, etc., which is all to the good. However, he has next to nothing to say about the matter of single greatest import, which is the primary raison d’etre for this project: the actual differences between this version and that of 1749. Instead, airily referring to information provided by recently published critical editions, he only says: “They show a number of differences compared to the version that is commonly played today, and thus give rise to minor variants....For the first time, the different versions of the Mass in B Minor have been identified and compared, thus giving us a better understanding of the genesis and history of the work. The original aria for bass voice, horn, and two bassoons, ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus,’ in particular, reveals many differences in the vocal parts.” Somebody ought to smack him upside the head!

Fortunately, as suggested by the more informative aspects of Pichon’s notes, far greater thought has been devoted to the performance than to the booklet contents, and overall it is quite a fine version. Be warned that this is the period-instrument approach with a vengeance. Both the strings and choral voices have a rigorously “straight” tone and total absence of vibrato to the maximum degree; the horn part is performed solely by overblowing rather than using any hand stopping in the bell in order to alter pitches; the timpani is played with the explosive aggressiveness of a howitzer; tempos in the faster sections are brisk indeed (the closing “Cum sancto Spiritu” is a mad dash to the finish line); and so on. However, Pichon makes a very satisfying unity of what in lesser hands would degenerate into an exercise in hidebound pedantry. I am particularly taken with the exquisitely delicate use of the theorbo in accompaniment passages, such as for the alto-tenor duet “Domine Deus,” which dances with airy lightness. Of the soloists—who do sing with vibrato!—the two sopranos, male alto, and tenor are excellent; the bass has a somewhat diffuse and unfocused vocal emission, but not to a degree that is a serious detriment. The chorus and instrumentalists are first-rate, as fine as those of any other top-tier period-performance group; the recorded sound is up close and has a welcome degree of resonance that takes the edge off the astringency of this ensemble’s sonic palette. Quite needlessly, the brief Latin text (with English and French translations) is spread out over three pages.

All things considered, this disc is something of a curiosity, primarily of interest to the Bach completist. However, if you have the curiosity and the funds to investigate it, and are partial to this type of interpretive approach, the rewards are considerable, and so I commend it to your attention accordingly. It will be interesting to see where Pichon and Pygmalion choose to go from here.

FANFARE: James A. Altena

This was L’Opéra Harmonique’s first production at Opéra de Rouen. It is a singularly thought-provoking take on Purcell’s famous piece. The extended duration is due to various inserts along the way in the manner of the period. The orchestra, using period instruments, is wonderfully polished throughout, making the pointed dances a particular delight.

Here, the sea is the ‘matrix of the action’, to quote the booklet notes. As a “reflection of the protagonists’ souls”, it shadows the fluidity of the action and the characters’ response to the travails of doomed love. Cécile Roussat and Julien Lubek have done a sterling, hyper-imaginative job of direction, choreography, sets and costumes. The stage deliberately seems to invoke the mythic, a magical time before ours, artificial in its immediate effect but, via this distancing, allowing the core emotions of the drama to shine forth. The production sets out to depict all characters involved in the action, even those merely mentioned in the libretto (like Diana). Also Cupid draws his bow in stylised movements onstage during the course of the dramatic and beautifully expressive Overture. The excellent choir is offstage throughout, a disembodied Greek chorus capable of the greatest delight as well as the deepest pathos (“Great minds against themselves conspire”). Replacing them onstage, perhaps, are the dancers and acrobats. Prepare for a raft of the interpolations mentioned above; gird yourself for example, also for trapeze artists, swing from the ceiling as the lovers’ hands seek to touch, a scene that moves effortlessly into “Let the triumphs of love and of beauty be shown”.

Vocally, the first thing to note is that this international cast delivers the English text astonishingly well. As much care has gone into diction as has been lavished on any other performance aspect and indeed on the production.

The Dido is Alaskan soprano Vivica Genaux, stunning in her expressivity and decidedly feisty in her final scene with Aeneas. Yet she is truly touching in her Lament, beginning with her arms fully extended as if to reflect the length and beauty of her phrasing. Finally, she is enveloped by the sea, the sea that has provided such a powerful metaphor throughout. At last, also, we the DVD viewers see the chorus, now in the orchestra pit. Feathers fall at the end — traditionally a sign of angelic presence – is this the reference?

Portuguese soprano Ana Quintans is a fresh-voiced, charming Belinda, wondrously nimble at “Haste, haste to town”. Perhaps the surprise is a male singer for the part of the Sorceress, a high baritone, Marc Mauillon, who also takes the role of the Sailor. The use of a male voice was suggested by a 1706 prompt book, and 'hir' (to use a conflation of “his” and “her”) scenes are augmented by dancers. S/he is a sort of camp octopus. Don’t buy the DVD on this information alone, but I admit that it sounds intriguing.

As Aeneas, Henk Neven is vocally superb although perhaps his stage presence does not quite suggest Aeneas’ magnetism. However, this is altogether a most fascinating DVD, superbly performed. The camera-work is good, if not excellent — sometimes sudden close-ups can seem rather random. Not by any means your run-of-the-mill Dido, but for those that already own the William Christie Glyndebourne on Opus Arte (or that same conductor’s version on Fra Musica with Hilary Summers), or Hogwood’s ROH DVD (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with a cast that includes Sarah Connolly), this DVD still acts as a necessary complement.

-- Colin Clarke, MusicWeb International

With their poetry, their passionate and intimate lyricism, their refined style that gradually reveals hidden depths, the thirteen Nocturnes of Gabriel Fauré are the most significant group of works in his oeuvre for solo piano. Composed over a period of forty-six years (between 1875 and 1821), they bear witness to the composer’s remarkable stylistic evolution. From a form of expression rooted in romanticism, to an aesthetic fully aligned with 20th-century modernity, Fauré can be said to have shaped his musical personality like a sculptor. His Nocturnes are not all of equal importance, but as a whole their diversity and development offer a perfect panorama of his art. Éric Le Sage, one of the French piano school’s main representatives, whose many recordings for Alpha include the complete chamber music of Fauré, here interprets the repertoire closest to his heart.

This production shows for the first time in two centuries Molière and Lully's comédie-ballet in its original and unabridged 1670-version, with the sung and danced interludes interwoven into the action, recreating the atmosphere of unbridled hilarity, which is the hallmark of comédie-ballet.

After the success of the first fourteen reissues, which restored to the limelight some of the gems of the early music repertory in the catalogues of our labels, here are fourteen new titles to allow listeners to renew acquaintance with further treasures of the Renaissance and Baroque (and even a journey through time thanks to Raphaël Imbert’s album Bach Coltrane), performed by some of the leading interpreters of the genre; most of these discs won one or more awards on their first release. As with the first series, the artists have been asked to contribute to the booklets, in which, with a few years’ hindsight, they talk about their conception of the works and how they went about recording them. The photographers of the Magnum agency illustrate the covers of the series with their work; this time the common design element is the colour yellow.

This recording, Déesses Outragées (offended Goddesses) presents the destinies of women in love, betrayed, abandoned or despairing. Agnès Mellon brings out all the fire and passion of these works.

We know very little about Ruiz Samaniego, Kapellmeister in Saragossa during the second half of the 18th century. However, he left an abundant music production, including some villancicos. These polyphonic vocal works of theatrical origin have been adopted by the Church to celebrate their main feasts. Sung in Spanish, not in Latin, they are built on a religious thematic, mostly in the form of dialogues and they frequently use musical elements of popular origin. Very little explored, the Spanish Baroque vocal music is a world of many rich artistic treasures that cry to be rediscovered. The villancicos of Ruiz Samaniego are undoubtedly part of these treasures, as witnesses of an artistic universe specific to Spain, in which spirituality and sensuality are irremediably fused.

Ensemble Nevermind made a good impression via the Alpha Classics label with their Conversations album, and this Telemann programme also surpasses expectations for range and sheer variety of musical content, showing how canny 18th century masters were in making the most out of small chamber ensembles.

Telemann’s influence as a composer spread throughout Europe in the first half of the 18th century in no small part due to distribution of his chamber music from his own publishing house. This quality of this work reached the attention of flautist and composer Michael Blavet, and an invitation went out to Germany for Telemann to join in the salons and Concerts Spirituel that represented the height of musical fashion in the French capital at the time.

The quartet format heard in this stylish recording might well have been cooked up between Blavet and Telemann, but whatever its origins the combination of flute, violin, viola da gamba or cello and harpsichord ticks all the boxes for contrast of timbre and flexibility when it comes to applying pretty much any compositional technique of the period. Concerto movements can be found, as in the Prélude to the Quatuor no. 4, variations appear in Quatuor no. 6, which opens with a French overture, and dance forms of various kinds that are disguised under French expression markings such as Coulant or tempo indications such as Vite.

Pieces intended for the consumption of elite concertgoers might be expected to be somewhat superficial, and while there is goodly entertainment to be had throughout, there are plenty of movements and passages which affect the emotions more strikingly that you might have anticipated. The solemn ecclesiastical origins of the Fuguette that opens this programme makes it a case in point, and while all too brief the fourth movement Largo from the Concerto No. 1 can compete with Telemann’s contemporary, J.S. Bach. Contrast is all, and hardly anything here lingers beyond a five minute duration. More substantial movements, such as the Prélude to Quatuor No. 6, have their contrasting sections, with improvisatory playing adding spice to slower tempi, and little rhythmic tricks adding spice to the faster sections, played with improvisatory flair by Nevermind’s expert musicians.

Recorded closely but with an excellent refinement of balance that blends the harpsichord with the other instruments, this is a production for long-term delight. The Sonate in F major TWV 43:F1 may be a world premiere recording, the present version being one adapted from an original scored for four strings and continuo. Documentation about the instruments played is included in the booklet, and all sound very nice indeed, the transverse flute played with sweet nuance by Anna Besson, who interestingly swaps for a piccolo in the Vite of Quatuor No. 4. For Telemann fans and those intrigued by what happens when German baroque meets French fashion, this is a must.

– MusicWeb International (Dominy Clements)

As eldest son of Louis XIV, Louis of France, nicknamed le Grand Dauphin, was marked out to become king of France at his father's death. He was therefore given the education of a monarch, as this would have been conceived in the 17th century: running the affairs of the kingdom required knowledge of diplomatic and commercial relations, but also the acquisition of the external manifestations the Sun King had resorted to so skilfully, subjecting architecture, drama, painting and music to the requirements of his government. Just like his father, the Dauphin surrounded himself with chosen personalities, amongst whom the composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Removed from an official position at court by the talent and the intrigues of Lully, he was not allowed to write for the opera, for which the "Surintendant de la musique" had obtained a royal privilege. He therefore concentrated his creative activity primarily on sacred music, giving it the "Italian style" expressivity he had learned in Rome, where he had studied with Carrissimi. This religious lyricism deploys itself in the motets composed for Monseigneur's religious services. The later would remain Dauphin for eternity since he died in 1711, four years before his father.

Bruno Helstroffer writes of his new release: "It's a logbook, the one I've never really kept. My years of blues/rock and early music mingle here; the thousands of kilometers travelled with that theorbo of mine, the cities and the countryside, the railways, the skies, the scents, the lights; but above all, the music of the people. 'Partite variate sopra quest'aria francese detta l'alemana' is a tablature by Piccinini of an aria also called La Monica. In North America in the late nineteenth century, railroad hoboes carved their vagabond pseudonym along the tracks, which they called their 'moniker'... 'Corrente VI sopra l'alemana,' by the same composer, is the energetic counterpart to the noble and meditative allemande. 'Like a Belfry' is taken from a dream... Rosemary Standley has set her words to the melody and sings them. J. H. Kapsberger's 'Toccata nona' is associated here with Perivoli Blue. Perivoli is a village in the south of the island of Corfu. 'Thanks Toumani' expresses my fascination with Mandingo music. Bellerofonte Castaldi's 'Arpeggiata a mio modo' was one of my first challenges on the theorbo. Erik Satie's 'Gnossienne no.1' arrived under my fingers without warning and made a place for itself here by fitting in so naturally that I couldn't say no to it. This is the piece chosen by my photographer friend Richard Dumas to make the video clip of the album. With Kapsberger's 'Bergamasca,' a dance from Bergamo in Italy, the theorbo becomes a festive and agile instrument. 'A Tea with Bach' is an arrangement of the Minuet from Bach's Cello Suite no.1. The 'Toccata Undicesima' serves as the introduction to an improvisation: Vos luths. And invokes India."

'I want to move and be moved. Everything about music is moving'; these are the words in which Wolfgang Rihm once stated his musical credo. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz has in the meantime become one of the most frequently performed works in the 20thcentury German opera repertoire. Based on Georg Büchner's novella about the poet Jakob Lenz's unavoidable decline into madness, Wolfgang Rihm builds a highly charged atmosphere that leads us compellingly to a dramatic denouement. As a result of the wealth of musical styles - ranging from spoken text through Sprechgesang and recitative to fully elaborated coloratura - and of harmonic techniques - atonality, widened tonality and pure tonality - this work is sometimes compared to Berg's Wozzeck. After Kát'a Kabanová and La Traviata, Andrea Breth is returning to La Monnaie for a radical interpretation of this deeply moving work. After a first recording published by Alpha, dedicated to the Bach family, Georg Nigl is amazing in the main role.

Haydn2032, the ambitious project of recording the complete symphonies of Haydn, has been placed from the start under the artistic direction of Giovanni Antonini, with two ensembles, Il Giardino Armonico, which made the first four volumes, and the Kammerochester Basel, to which this fifth volume and the next two are assigned. Another characteristic of the edition is that each time Haydn is set in perspective with another composer; here it is Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-92): ‘Kraus was the first man of genius that I met. Why did he have to die? It is an irreparable loss for our art. The Symphony in C minor he wrote in Vienna specially for me is a work which will be considered a masterpiece in every century’, said Haydn in 1797. Though he long remained forgotten after his death, Kraus made an active contribution to the movement of poetic renewal called ‘Sturm und Drang’ or ‘Geniezeit’ (time of genius) because such artists as the young Goethe broke free of all tradition to follow their hearts alone. When Haydn called Kraus homme de genie, in French, he probably had this context in mind. The two composers had met in Vienna in 1783.

For more than a century, from the last Valois kings to the early years of the reign of Louis XIV, the air de cour was truly the emblematic genre of French secular music. The term bears witness to the influence on and transformation by worldly and literate circles of vocal genres of popular origin such as the vaudeville, combined with Italian influences (the villanella), based on the principles of a simple strophic musical setting that facilitated understanding of the poetic text. Three composers dominated the production of airs de cour in the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIII, bringing the genre to it's peak: Pierre Guédron (1565-1620), Antoine Boesset (1587-1643) and Étienne Moulinié (1599-1676). To mark the twentieth anniversary of his ensemble, Vincent Dumestre has chosen to celebrate the air de cour by bringing together excerpts from his five recordings devoted to the genre. A book accompanies this double album, including an article written by Thomas Leconte of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, a rich array of illustrations and an article on the historical context by Alexandre Maral, Curator General at the Musée National du Château de Versailles.

Classical Music

Georg Philipp Telemann, one of the most prolific composers of the Baroque era. Giovanni Antonini and Il Giardino Armonico have taken this opportunity to pay tribute to his eclecticism in a programme juxtaposing works that move constantly between French and Italian stylistic traditions. On this disc, Giovanni Antonini not only directs the ensemble, but also returns to the recorder, his own instrument of choice (as it was the composer’s), and performs the Suite in A minor, the Concerto in C major and the Concerto da camera in G minor. We will also discover a curiosity, a sonata for chalumeaux. This instrument of folk origins is comparable to the clarinet, and Telemann was the first composer to show an interest in it.

With the participation of: Tindaro Capuano, Enrico Onofri.

This production of Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone was filmed in January 2017 at the Grand Théâtre of Geneva. It forms a part of the ‘Cavalli tetralogy’ of the past few years, conducted by the man who has become Cavalli’s great ambassador: Leonardo Garcia Alarcón. Il Giasone, Dramma musicale, in a Prologue and Three Acts, first performed on 5 January 1649, alternates the tragic with the comic, with no concern for fidelity to the mythological legend of Jason and Medea. Francesco Cavalli’s opera, composed for the carnival season in Venice, presents a mosaic of contrasted episodes, rich in musical emotions. His music here attains a remarkable degree of evocative power, with la musica having the upper hand over la dramma. Il Giasone represents the subtle equilibrium between lyricism and narrative. The comic, the tragic, and the supernatural all meet and mingle, and Cavalli’s Lamenti – forming the climax of the work – are particularly unequalled,. Resolutely burlesque and zany, Serena Singaglia’s production celebrates the opera’s sensuality. Le Temps commented: ‘In the pit, the Cappella Mediterranea with Garcia Alarcón pursue a sense of musical flux with delicacy, lightness and quick-footedness, ideally responding to the score’s demands. With an instrumental sound that is both round and sprightly, they succeed in capturing the ludic dimension of the work, its melodic freshness, and its harmonic tensions. Drama and rapture are artfully fused together.”

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REVIEW:

The top-notch cast really savor the score’s lyricism, balancing all the cross-dressing camp with something disarmingly heartfelt. Dominique Visse is an irrepressible Delfa, taking ‘her’ pleasure wherever possible, and there are fine cameos from the veteran tenor Raúl Giménez as the cuckolded Egeo (cruelly styled as Peter Ustinov’s Poirot in Death on the Nile), Willard White’s Oreste and Migran Agadzhanyan as a nervily energetic Demo.

– Gramophone