Today regarded as one of the most innovative and active Baroque ensembles on the international scene, Cappella Mediterranea has already made several distinguished recordings for the Ricercar label. Leonardo Garcia Alarcon will continue his diverse collaborations with Ricercar, but will also release several projects with Alpha Classics, beginning with this original program of music by one of his favorite composers, Claduio Monteverdi. On the occasion of a music theater piece performed at the Doge’s Palace in Venice which was centered on Poppea, whom her nurse Arnalta warns against the vices, Cappella Mediterranea recorded this anthology of arias and madrigals alternating between sins and virtues, performed by the singers who have made the ensemble’s reputation, including Francesca Aspromonte as Poppea, Mariana Flores in Si dolce e’l tormento among others, and the tenor Emiliano Gonzalez-Toro.

Guillaume de Machaut was born around 1300 in the environs of Reims, which at that time was a flourishing royal city with a population of almost 20,000, famous throughout Europe for its textile workshops and trade fairs. Like most cathedrals of Western Europe, Reims is built on the site of an earlier edifice. The Rouelle altar, on the left in the nave, adjacent to the choir screen, was dedicated to the Holy Spirit. But in 1343 a magnificent statue of the Virgin Mary was placed there. In 1341 Archbishop Jean de Vienne established a plainchant Votive Mass for the Virgin, to be performed each week before the Rouelle altar. The Marian Mass was introduced by Guillaume de Machaut and his younger brother Jean as a perpetuation of the archbishop’s wish, and it was for that particular liturgy, which was sung every Saturday throughout the year, that Guillaume wrote his famous polyphonic mass. The Messe de Nostre Dame, as it is called in only one of the five surviving manuscripts, is the first complete preserved polyphonic mass known to be by a single hand. It includes the five movements of the Ordinary plus the four-voice Ite missa est. The Mass is not strictly speaking a unified cycle, but there is nevertheless great coherence in its rhythmic and harmonic languages. The succession of movements shows a broad construction and a harmonious and carefully established stylistic progression, from the Kyrie with its strong harmonic structure to the Agnus Dei with its melodic lyricism.

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.

The performances are a sheer delight

Johannes Mattheson’s writings on musical taste and fashion are universally quoted by historians of the Baroque, yet his own music is very little known and even less recorded. The 12 sonatas of Der brauchbare Virtuoso are an ear-opener. They’re advertised as for flute or violin, a common sales technique. Most are in four movements – slow-fast-slow-fast – and they are very good indeed. Mattheson ardently advocated the primacy of melody, and his slow movements float beguilingly past the ear, sometimes delaying moments of repose with Corellian skill, elsewhere shaping phrases like the singing of a human voice. Fast movements are driven by impeccable harmonic logic. The performances are a sheer delight. Diana Baroni and Pablo Valetti create a remarkable range of colours. They play to the limits of expressiveness, yet with great persuasion – the ‘honest virtuosi’ of the title. Their sparkling ornaments decorate but never distort, lyrical lines while fast movements have an élan, even nonchalance, which only absolute technical mastery can deliver. Börner and Skalka complete the picture with a remarkable range of continuo colours and textures. The inventiveness of the playing spills over into imaginative editing – improvisatory introductions, and an added obbligato and flute-violin dialogue to allow everyone to join in the final sonata. Commended unreservedly.

Performance: *****
Sound: *****

-- BBC Music Magazine

French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century abounds in fine and very original symphonic and concerted works that are rarely explored. During the symphonic revival initiated by Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck, several famous virtuosos encouraged composers to write new works that were to leave their makr on the repertoire. One of those musicians was the pianist Louis Diémer, for whom César Franck composed his famous 'Variations symphoniques'. But we tend to forget that this masterpiece came into being largely thanks to the previous success of Franck's symphonic poem for piano and orchestra, based on a poem by Victor Hugo, 'Les Djinns'. At a time when composers were trying to get away from the traditional image of music, it opened up a new path that others were to follow. As for Jules Massenet's 'Piano Concerto', it represents the lesser-known side of a very great composer, who is remembered above all for his operas. It combines virtuosity and sensitivity, refinement and lyricism, not to forget the 'exotic' touch in the final movement, with the inspiration of Slovakian folk music. Recorded in Bilknet Concert Hall, Ankara, Turkey, on 16, 18 and 19 December 2005.

Nearly a century after its composition, Lully’s Persée was recreated in 1770 to mark an exceptional event: the inauguration of the Royal Opera House at Versailles Palace, built to celebrate the wedding of the Dauphin (the future Louis XVI) and Marie Antoinette. For this unique occasion, three composers (Antoine Dauvergne, François Rebel and Bernard de Bury) were commissioned to revise Lully’s work and adapt it to the new circumstances and the new venue, which was regarded as absolutely extraordinary in its time.

Lovers of Lully’s opera will therefore meet their mythological hero again, now with a richer orchestration and more for the chorus and the ballet dancers to do. There were only two performances in 1770, but they were absolutely sumptuous: 95 choristers, 15 soloists, 80 dancers, 100 extras, 80 instrumentalists, five sets and 530 costumes.

You can now relive that historic event thanks to a recording conducted by the leading specialist in this repertory, Hervé Niquet, and a CD-book richly illustrated with engravings of the period and photos of the Opéra Royal and of manuscripts of the score.

Recorded at Versailles Palace in 2016, in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles.

Luis de Briceño’s arrival in France was marked by a wave of enthusiasm. The Spaniard was at the heart of a polemic that questioned the supremacy of the lute, an instrument cherished by French music lovers at the beginning of the 17th century. Our rekindled interest lies not in this controversy, but in the beauty of Briceño’s compositions and the freedom they offer the musicians who play them. On this album, we discover Le Poème Harmonique in a repertoire bearing the marked touch of popular Spanish music, accompanied by the delightful song of Isabelle Druet and Claire Lefilliâtre.

Franco-American singer Rosemary Standley tackles Baroque repertory with sobriety and elegance. Accompanied by the ensemble of Bruno Helstroffer, a guitarist and lutenist at the crossroads between ‘early’ and ‘modern’ worlds, Helstroffer’s Band is made up of musicians specializing in early instruments. The evocatively titled Love, I Obey is a poignant tribute to ballads that seem to warp time. The in-depth research pursued by the group’s harpsichordist Elisabeth Geiger restores to life pieces forgotten for 400 years, such as the title song by William Lawes.

Marking the tricentennial of the death of the Sun King, Alpha Classics, boasting a rich catalogue of benchmark Baroque recordings and a collection in partnership with the Château de Versailles, is celebrating ‘A reign full of music’. • More than any other sovereign of his time, Louis XIV (1638-1715) loved the arts and was responsible for their exceptional development. • All disciplines were the object of royal attention, thanks to both the considerable means the monarch devoted to them and to the structuring of each of the Beaux Arts in an academy, resulting in a fantastic harvest of masterpieces.

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REVIEW:

In the wake of the celebrations surrounding the tercentenary of the death of Louis XIV, here is an ideal introduction to a repertoire that has served as much as benefited from the royal absolutism of that time.

– ConcertoNet.com

This recording reflects musical life in France in the eighteenth century. Leaving aside the prestigious repertoire of vocal and instrumental works, however, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien share with us music that played an important part, first of all, in the daily lives and musical practices of the aristocracy, before gaining much wider appeal among the Parisian middle and lower classes, so that in the end it was popular at every level of society. Everyone in eighteenth-century Paris was familiar with and fond of the songs known as brunettes and petits airs tendres. Minuets, too, their tunes borrowed from well-known operas and their words sometimes changed, and contredanses (country dances), imported from the ballrooms of England, permeated society, appealing to the lowly and to the titled alike. These pieces were not intended for passive listening, but to be played, sung, danced, and experienced on a daily basis, whenever the opportunity arose. Being appreciated throughout the various social strata, they acted, so to speak, as a common denominator- a taste and a sensitivity that were shared by all, in the French capital and beyond.

In 1855 the organ world in Germany discovered Franz Liszt's performance of his most famous transcriptions on the organ of Merseburg. Yves Rechsteiner recaptures the magic atmosphere of these concerts.

Following his First Prize at the Bruges Competition and his first album, devoted to the Forqueray family (‘Choc’ of the Year in Classica, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros), the Franco American harpsichordist Justin Taylor has recently been awarded the ‘Révélation Musicale’ Prize of the French Critics’ Circle. His career has developed rapidly, both as soloist (harpsichordist and also fortepianist) and as director of his ensemble, the Taylor Consort, with which Alpha will soon be recording... For his second recital, Justin Taylor juxtaposes Scarlatti and Ligeti, two composers whose periods and universes seem so remote from each other, yet who show numerous affinities: in their inventiveness, the virtuosity of their respective languages and their common urge to push the keyboard to its very limits. Continuum builds a bridgehead between these two hypersensitive composers by intertwining Ligeti’s three emblematic (and spectacular!) pieces for solo harpsichord with sonatas by Scarlatti.

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REVIEWS:

This disc from rising French harpsichordist Justin Taylor finds a perfect partner for the quirky Italian. The Scarlatti sonatas are almost all relatively familiar ones, but Taylor ensures that they sound fresh. With a technique both neat and quick. He spins the music in smoothly contoured paragraphs, adding tightly curling ornamentation here and there but without hindering the music’s natural flow and rolling energy. This disc is an exhilarating vindication of the harpsichord as a solo instrument for music old and new.

– Gramophone

What matters most is the brilliance of these composers and Taylor’s energetic execution, which will make listeners sit up and take notice. Alpha’s recorded sound is quite close to the harpsichord, so every detail is crisp, clean, and fully audible.

– AllMusic Guide (B. Sanderson)

"Tremendous fun!", "Scintillating!", wrote the journalists of Diapason and Classica about the most recent recording of Olivier Fortin and his ensemble, devoted to the rarely heard Romanus Weichlein, which received every honor from the French musical press (Diapason d'Or, Choc de Classica, FFFF Telerama). This year, the Canadian harpsichordist and his loyal band have decided to record Telemann, the 250th anniversary of whose death will be commemorated in 2017. Two anonymous musicians from the city of Hamburg wrote in 1728 that "Handel composes music" but Telemann composes "music and affects". The overture-suites by Telemann presented on this recording are written in a "mimetic' style: Les Nations, the Concerto Polonois, La Bizarre and the Burlesque de Quixotte explore a vast range of subjects and, even more than all his other works, reveal a man of the theatre, widely read, curious a humorist and a shrewd observer of the physical and political world around him.

This extensive release gives you a chance to admire some of the most glittering jewels left to us by the Baroque era. Its fifteen individual albums outline an exciting panorama of musical Europe during that period, an inspired heritage performed by the finest soloists and ensembles: Vivaldi’s Gloria by Le Concert Spirituel and Herve Niquet and his Four Seasons by Gli Incogniti and Amandine Beyer; Bach’s B minor Mass by Pygmalion and Raphaël Pichon, the Solo Cello Suites by Bruno Cocset, the Brandenburg Concertos by Cafe Zimmermann and the Goldberg Variations by Celine Frisch; Charpentier’s Te Deum by Le Poème Harmonique and Vincent Dumestre; Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by MusicAeterna and Teodor Currentzis; Rameau harpsichord pieces by Blandine Rannou; Albinoni sonatas by Ensemble 415 and Chiara Banchini; and much else. This is, no doubt, a veritable treasure trove containing the indispensable works of the Baroque by today’s leading artists.

The event known as 'Les grandes eaux Musicales de Versailles 2012', when all the fountains are working, accompanied by music, is presented by the Palace of Versailles in collaboration with Alpha. The music consists of a selection of absolute masterpieces of French Baroque music, from seventeenth-­-- and eighteenth-­--century songs to great classics of the operatic repertoire, performed by some of the label's leading artists, including the ensemble Pygmalion, Le Poème harmonique, Café Zimmermann and others.