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!

"Pastime with Good Company" is a recording that celebrates the 5th Anniversary of the Alpha Productions label. Every artist on the roster (including such notables as Gustav Leonhardt, Cafe Zimmerman and L'Arpeggiata) recorded a piece of their own choice for this production. It is a wonderful sampler of the artists and repertoire featured on the label, and because all of the tracks were specially recorded for this disc, none of the music is duplicated on other releases. It was released in 2003 and includes the current catalog through that year.

Tracks

1 L'Arpeggiata, La Rosina
2 L'Arpeggiata & Marco Beasley, Un Cavalier di Spagna
3 Quatuor Habanera, Astor Piazzolla, Michelangelo'70
4 Diabolus in Musica, Gaudeat ecclesia
5 Café Zimmermann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio en Sol Majeur
6 Nima Ben David, Tobias Hume, Good again
7 Gustav Leonhardt, Louis Couperin, Prélude en Do
8 Eugène Green, Tirsis s'en alloit mourir d'aise
9 Hélène Schmitt, Nicola Matteis, Passagio rotto e fantasia a violino solo senza basso
10 Frédéric Désenclos, Guillaume Lasceux, Flûtes
11 Brice Duisit, Viadeira
12 Joël Grare, Bela Bartok a-t-il souri dans la nuit ?
13 Bruno & Esther Cocset, Sally Gardens - Fischer's Hornpipe - Ladies's Hornpipe
14 Arthur Schoonderwoerd, Ludwig van Beethoven, Für Elise, 1810
15 Les Witches, Slieve Russel - Wellington's advance - The three little drummers
16 Le Poème Harmonique, Clément Janequin, Toutes les nuits

These are beautiful, finely-wrought and tightly-focused works standing on tense tiptoes at one of western music's most important turning points, peeking both ways.

'The science of numbers ought to be preferred as an acquisition before all others… Every art considers reason more honourable than a skill which is practised by the hand or the labour of an artisan,' wrote Boethius, one of music's earliest theorists. For Boethius music was essentially a mathematical discipline – chiefly because the regularities, predictabilities and knowability of mathematics best reflected the Creator's world. Boethius' influence was still strongly felt in the twelfth century when one small area of a relatively small city lead musical development throughout Europe certainly as never before and perhaps as never since: Notre Dame in Paris. Paris Expers Paris ('Paris has no equals') is a splendid CD celebrating the pre-eminence of the Notre Dame school and its achievements from the mid twelfth to mid thirteenth centuries. Two innovations in particular changed the course of music. Firstly harmonically: organum (virtuosic melismatic embellishment of the text in the upper solo voices). Then rhythmical innovations: the imposition of a steady beat on otherwise equal values for notes – as in plainchant. The motet (multiple, usually polyphonic, voices singing multiple texts, sacred and secular) and conductus (usually non-liturgical, or even secular, composition with up to four voices performing original texts) epitomize these innovations.

This pre-eminence in music was led by the two giant composer figures Léonin and Pérotin. They wrote against the background of the great University in Paris with scholars like Abelard, the monastic Mont Ste. Geneviève and the 'Left Bank'. It was amid this vibrant, evolving and questioning atmosphere that neo-Platonism emphasized the relationship of the visible and material with the invisible and immaterial. The essence of Gothic thinking was to bathe in harmony, coherence and unity as Gothic cathedrals bathed in the light of the Divine. It was also inevitable that theories of music should emerge that were specific to its technicalities; theories that no longer sought to explain and explore organum, say, in terms purely of Boethian mathematics. Such a development seems to have conflicted with the prevailing distinctions made by Boethius between the musicus (the speculative theoretician) and the cantor (the operative practitioner). That is, roughly a distinction between composer and performer. The distinction was all the starker since the six solo cantor clerics from the Notre Dame choir known as 'machicoti' memorized and may have improvised their organum. Their role was much more than reproduction of plainchant by this time. That non-written and 'occasional' music-making surely accounts in part for why we do not have more examples of their work. Those that we do are consequently all the more precious.

Paris Expers Paris is a CD with nine examples, ranging in length from under 2½ to nearly 18½ minutes, of the richness of this extraordinary musical development sung most expertly by the six-strong Diabolus in Musica (two tenors, baritone and three bass-baritones) in transcriptions by their director, Antoine Guerber. This is not, though, a purely didactic or dry set of historical curiosities. It's live, spirited and wholly contextualised music. Although it was recorded not in Notre Dame itself but in the Abbey of Fontevraud for the splendid acoustic of its refectory (the venue for this CD) and high dormitory.

Benedicamus Domino and Descendit de celis are three-part organa typical of the melismatic traditions established at Notre Dame by the late twelfth century and are examples of responses by the main choir to the 'specialist', élite machicoti. Sursum corda is a two-part conductus actually itself an exhortation to sing polyphonically – but carefully: 'non discordat vox a corde'! The text contains many musical terms… probably more evidence of its performers' awareness of the important musical changes through with they were passing.

Mundus vergens and Deus misertus are four-part conducti; the former lamenting the current national troubles and political instability in France at the time. The latter was probably introduced by Pérotin, who was the first to write in four parts; it sets Old and New testament texts. Olim sudor herculis is a one-part conductus whose author (for once) we know – Peter of Blois, a noteworthy scholar. Naturas deus regulis, O Maria virginei and Veri floris sub figura are three-part conducti concerning the clergy and Virgin.

These are beautiful, finely-wrought and tightly-focused works standing on tense tiptoes at one of western music's most important turning points, peeking both ways. Diabolus in Musica does the music proud. The centerpiece is the extraordinary and lengthy (over 18 minutes) Descendit de celis. The singing throughout is clear and directed, fluent and without a hint of languor yet Diabolus in Musica sing with an acute awareness of the awe in which this music deserves to be held. Such a balance (between 'edge' and reverence) is surely achieved by the enjoyment and affection which the ensemble brings to their performances, and to the occasion. The singing has a remarkably unified sound to it; the voices blend well and the balance is clean and easy on the ear. Although the weight of the ensemble is towards the lower end of the vocal range, the sound of Diabolus in Musica is reserved and serious rather than sombre.

Attractively-presented in a sturdy 'Digipak' with an informative booklet (parts of it a little hard to read: black on gray) which contains background to everything relevant except, unfortunately, Diabolus in Musica themselves – so see their site and has texts in Latin, French and English. The recording is excellent.

There are other discs of some of the music from this period, certainly by the two great exponents Léonin and Pérotin. But not all, and not all so expertly rendered as here. Paris Expers Paris is a special CD and one to buy and listen to repeatedly with real delight.

Mark Sealey, Classical Net

The Ostinato literally went through ages... It's a musical process founded on the repetition of a rhythmic, or melodic, or harmonic formula. It's the 'weft' of passacaglias, ciacconas... and of very popular works such as Ravel's Boléro, or Pachelbel's Canon. This process also inspired a lot of pop musicians, or minimalist American composers. Vincent Dumestre chose this way to propose, as much to 'fans' as to the general public, a thematic route within the best Poème Harmonique's recordings. It's at the same time a sort of Poème Harmonique's portrait, proposed at a very attractive price...

In 1565, Diego Ortiz published a sacred music collection under the title Musices liber primus-Hymnos, Magnificat, Salves, Motecta, Psalmos aliaque diersa cantica complectens, printed in Venice by Antonion Gardano and where the polyphonic pieces of this disc come from.

A Baroque journey The ensemble Mare Nostrum (dir. Andrea De Carlo) and Nora Tabbush (a worthy heir to Montserrat Figueras) here revive some pure treasures of Spanish music. Combining early instruments (viola da gamba, cornetto, etc.) with traditional ones, they bring out all the colours of these songs and dances that were to be heard in New Spain. New Spain, the Spanish viceroyalty (1535-1821), stretched from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah (United States) to Costa Rica in Central America, with Mexico City as its capital. It administered not only the territory within those limits, but also the Philippines in Asia and various small islands in the Pacific, such as Guam.

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!

This album marks the third release in the collaboration between the Ensemble Intercontemporarin and Alpha. This time the musicians of the ensemble and their conductor, Matthias Pintscher focus on American music: Intégrales by Edgar Varèse, Music for Wind Instruments by John Cage, Instruments I for six instruments by Morton Feldman, Elliott Carter's Concerto for clarinet and ensemble, Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 for string quartet, Sean Shepherd's Blur, and David Fulmer's Within his bending sickle's compass come for solo horn and ensemble. More than ninety years of creativity and musical profusion at the heart of the global city that the Ensemble Intercontemporain celebrates today. This album is being released to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the EIC: forty years of discoveries and of promotion of contemporary music at the highest level of performance.

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REVIEW:

This excellent compilation — excellent in its musical choices and in its performance — is a marvelous balm to my ears. The two youngest composers demonstrate that at least some American music produced today challenges my expectations and proposes new possibilities for form, timbre, and harmony.

– American Record Guide

Alpha is very proud to welcome this grande dame of lyric art. A great Mozartian, she also excels in Gluck, Berlioz and Offenbach and has sung with the greatest, from Claudio Abbado to Marc Minkowski or Frans Bru?ggen. Her rich discography features numerous repertoires but, up until now, it included only one recording of mélodies, whereas she is unanimously recognized as one of the world’s most eminent ambassadresses of the French art song. With her accomplice Susan Manoff, a connoisseur of vocal music and a tremendously sensitive pianist, she has assembled this programme devoted to songs she loves, mixing a few wellknown gems and others, quite rare, such as this superb Néère, from Reynaldo Hahn’s Muses latines.

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REVIEW:

Gens, as one might expect, is exceptional in this repertoire. Most of the songs are about erotic anticipation and tristesse, and her dark, slightly smoky tone adds to the sensuality of it all. She sings as much off the text as the line, but nothing is nudged or forced in an overtly interventionist way. ‘A Chloris’ is one of the best there is, and Hahn’s ‘Néère’, which gives the disc its title, leaves you open-mouthed with its beauty.

– Gramophone

At the end of the 15th century, a young Roman shepherd discovered by accident the remains of the ancient palace built by Emperor Nero, the Domus Aurea or golden house. Thereafter, all the great artists of what History today calls Renaissance (Raffaello, Michelangelo ...) would descend into these « grottoes » to admire the last remains of Ancient Rome's painting and would launch a movement aspiring to a return to the times of Latin splendour. Amazingly vigorous, the erudite and exciting disc recorded by Roberto Festa's Daedalus ensemble leads us to rediscover the musical side of this school, of which Virgil was the model, and which will leave its mark on the whole of 16th century Europe.

This release is intended to forge a link between Mozart's chamber music and operas. It combines a divertimento by the young Mozart of 1772 with two mature quartets composed around 1782. The young quartet showcasing these works is Quatuor Van Kuijk, who has already become an international prize-winner in their short lifespan. Nowhere else in Mozart's quartets do theatre and counterpoint form such a happy pairing. Praised by The Guardian for its "style, energy and a sense of risk."

MOZART Serenades: in D, K 239, “Serenata notturna”; in G, K 525, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” Divertimento in B, K 287 • Patrick Cohën-Akenine (vn), cond; Les Folies Francaises • ALPHA 092 (71:10)


Les Folies Francaises is a group of 18 musicians here led by violinist Patrick Cohën-Akenine in three occasional works, two very famous, and one relatively neglected. Perhaps neglected is not the ideal word for the Divertimento in B, yet it has received infinitely fewer recordings than the “Serenata notturna” and the ever-popular “Eine kleine Nachtmusik.” I have all three in lovely recordings by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, several in distinguished recordings by Colin Davis, Eugen Jochum, and there are more modern recordings, equally charming, by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In fact, the choices are vast.


Les Folies Francaises offers early-music balances and transparency. The timpani are prominent in the opening march of the “Serenata notturna,” which was recorded in a resonant space that lets the drum sound unfold. The engineers were also alert to the conversational quality of this Serenade and of the other two pieces. We hear the solos strings separated, though not excessively, from the larger group in a way I find effective and even illuminating. The echo effects, or something like them, in “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” are especially well done. The performances are perky, clear, dance-like, and meant to charm rather than overwhelm. I never yearn for a larger group, or a more imposing sound. Without knowing for sure, one begins to believe that this was the way Mozart intended these pieces to be played.


FANFARE: Michael Ullman

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.

The conductor Jérémie Rhorer is today regarded as one of the finest interpreters of the music of Mozart in general and his operas in particular. After conducting Die Entfu?hrung aus dem Serail at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2015, he performed it again at a memorable concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in September of that year with his orchestra, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie. It is this exceptional event, captured in a live recording conveying all the dramatic intensity of the opera, that we present today.

‘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.

MOZART Symphonie concertante, K 297b. 1 Quintet for Piano and Winds, K 452. 2 Oboe Concerto, K 314. 3 Dans un bois solitaire. 4 An Chloe. 5 Die Verschweigung 6 • Fernand Oubradous, cond; 1 Arthur Goldschmidt, cond; 3 O des Concerts Lamoureux; 1,3 Pierre Pierlot (ob); 1,2,3 Pierre Lefebvre (cl); 1 Jean Devémy (hn); 1,2 Maurice Allard (bn); 1,2 Irène Joachim (sop); 4,5,6 Yvette Grimaud (pn); 2 Ludwig Bergmann (pn); 4,5 Jean Germain (pn) 6 • ALPHA 800 (75:23)


Behind this imposing stack of headnotes is a historic collection of Mozart performances, made between 1938 (the first two songs) and 1951, and taken from the archives of Radio France. As must be clear, those were difficult years for music, and for life itself, in France. In the notes, Yvette Grimaud remembers that the Quintet recording was made (in 1948) when she was eating one meal a day. No one quite knew how the music they were making was going to be issued, and no one spoke about money. No one in fact spoke; they communicated through music, and seemed otherwise dumfounded.


So this is a holy recording to her. It is also eloquent, though not perfect. One hears in the first movement of the Piano Quintet the elegance of the winds, the sensitivity of the pianist, but one also hears Grimaud rush through several phrases, perhaps to give the sense of lightness, but disconcerting nonetheless. And one hears a prominent fluff by the usually impeccable horn, Jean Devémy. (There was of course no possibility of fixing such minor gaffes.) I find those problems more than compensated for by the beauty of the slow movement, in which horns and piano play with what Grimaud calls “serene amplitude.”


The Oboe Concerto and Symphonie concertante, featuring many of the same musicians, are similarly satisfying, though the sound of the concerto seems unnecessarily distant for a recording made, even on 78s, in 1951. I am less taken with the tremulous singing of Irène Joachim: she sounds a bit like the oboists of old, wavering and Victorian.


This is a collection for wind enthusiasts, I conclude, and as such, historically interesting as well as musically satisfying.


FANFARE: Michael Ullman