In the 1730s, many composers tried their luck in London. Geminiani revolutionized instrumental writing with his famous treatise on interpretation and presented an amazing version of La Folia; his pupil Avison orchestrated concertos by Scarlatti, and Porpora ventured away from opera to rediscover the vocality of the cello with one of the most beautiful concertos of that period. Oph�lie Gaillard and Pulcinella treat us to a frenzied and poetic night in London. They meet Vivaldi, Hasse, Scottish composer James Oswald and virtuoso cellist Giovanni Battista Cirri. Guest artists Sandrine Piau and Lucile Richardot take on magnificent vocal pieces by Geminiani and Handel.

There is a link between the style of the early masters and that of the innovators, asserted Sch�nberg. The program of this recording seeks to prove this saying of the master of the Second Viennese School. Hortense Cartier-Bresson sets up a dialogue between the fathers of serial music and Bach. Interweaving the Toccatas BWV 910-913-914 with the first Sonata of Berg, the Three Pieces of Sch�nberg and the Variations of Webern, this recording explores the great Austro-Germanic tradition and it's inheritance.

Liszt's predestination for sacred music doubtless stemmed from his childhood, when he had close ties to Catholicism through his father. He went on to compose many works expressing the virtues of various saints, and to those works Martin Haselb�ck and the Orchester Wiener Akademie are devoting a series of recordings. The first volume features St. Cecilia, with Cantantibus organis, St. Francis of Assisi, with La pr�dication aux oiseaux (the first of his Deux L�gendes for orchestra) and the Cantico del Sol di Francesco d'Assisi, and also St. Francis of Paola, with St. Fran�ois de Paule marchant sur les flots (Deux L�gendes No.2) and An den heiligen Franziskus von Paula. While bearing little resemblance to Liszt's secular compositions, these works are equally impressive in their beauty and refinement. This recording, while providing us with a fine opportunity to witness once again the composer's admirable skills, highlights an aspect of Liszt's work that is all too often forgotten.

Fran�ois Couperin's early publications include a number of airs serieux, as well as several short pieces that were included in the collection of Pi�ces choisies pour le clavecin published by Ballard in 1707. Here Christophe Rousset and Cyrille Dubois reveal little-known aspects of the art of Fran�ois Couperin. Some of these pieces testify to the composer's taste for music in the Italian style, which is also evident in his sonatas, which include not only the famous La Steinkerque, but also La Superbe and La Sultane, in which Rousset conducts Les Talens Lyriques. The program also presents a hitherto uncataloged drinking song, Souvent dans le plus doux sort, the only known autograph piece so far discovered.

By the mid-18th century Vienna had established itself as the center of European musical life, witnessing the development of the Classical style and then Romanticism. At the same time, the guitar was rapidly evolving and, in the absence of interesting original compositions, it's repertoire saw the flourishing of a whole host of arrangements, before the mad "guitar mania" that was to take hold in the 19th century. Here, Edin Karamazov and Pavel Steidl perform new arrangements for two guitars of three emblematic works of that period. Bringing together pieces illustrating the structural mastery and playfulness of Haydn, the melodic inventiveness of Mozart and the poetic imagination of Schubert, they present a musical portrait, for twelve strings and four hands, of the Austrian capital at that time.

After Mozart's youth symphonies, the Freiburger Barockorchester returns to the composer with his concertante music. A 'portrait of the artist as a young man', his last three violin concerto were composed when he was twenty years old. Melodically inventive, structurally rich, and showing complexity in the dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, these works represent important milestones, not only in Mozart's output, but also in the concerto genre in general. Often recorded, these concertos are presented here in a new version: in accordance with practices of the time, Kristian Bezuidenhout improvises a pianoforte part, while conducting the orchestra, over which the violin of Gottfried von der Goltz, an artist at the height of his powers, soars with great finesse.

Women poets, composers, dreamers, and mothers; their femininity is expressed through their artistic creations and works. From the Virgin Mary to Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz, via Mother Earth or Pachamama, Diana Baroni, Ronald Martin Alonso and Rafael Guel Frias pay tribute to the outstanding female personalities of the New World, from the time of colonization to the present day. The sonorities of the flute, the Baroque guitar, the viola da gamba and the percussions blend with those of the voice to paint a powerful and poetic portrait of this ancestral heritage.

Born in 2000, Simon B�rki has won many international competitions and is currently studying at the Juilliard School, New York, with Sergei Babayan. His d�but recording features works by Rachmaninov - 2023 marks the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth - and Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Schumann. The program confirms Simon B�rki's affinities, with some of Rachmaninov's sombre �tudes-Tableaux and Pr�ludes, together with two �tudes by Scriabin, and a selection of transcriptions and short pieces. In these (post-)Romantic miniatures, the young pianist demonstrates his outstanding virtuosity and sober elegance, as well as the exciting flamboyancy and intensity of his playing.

With Th�s�e, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques continue their tour of Lully's operas, in which they have become specialists. Lully's third musical tragedy, and one of the least recorded, Th�s�e recounts the hero's youth, long before his battle with the Minotaur or his intrigues with Ariadne and Ph�dre. The story takes the listener on a journey through a series of changing settings - from the underworld to the island of paradise, from Versailles to Athens - supported by the incredible vocal eloquence of Lully's music, underpinned by a constant and hitherto unrivalled tension. At the center of the drama, Karine Deshayes sings a flamboyant M�d�e, a pugnacious and tragic figure, guiding the listener through the most enraged opera in Lully's catalogue. Matthias Vidal and Deborah Cachet portray a most poignant Th�s�e/Egl�, giving the duets all their dramatic power. M�d�e's emblematic aria ("D�pit mortel, transport jaloux") alone captures the movement and wizardry that run through the entire work - one of the most captivating achievements of the Sun King's surintendant.

Andreas Scholl, the Czech Ensemble Baroque and Roman V�lek, introduce us to the splendid works of Frantisek Tuma - a little-known Czech composer who was a prominent musical figure in the 18th century. The musicians here perform several of his emblematic motets and cantatas composed for Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenb�ttel, embracing Tuma's splendid invention and intensity of expression.

Christophe Rousset offers his version of Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge, finally tackling the German master's most mysterious work, a phenomenal and unfinished construction whose instrumentation has given rise to musicological debate in recent centuries. Behind the prowess of this cathedral-like work, the performer reveals all the virtuosity that it demands from the keyboardist who brings it to life. This is a meditative journey to the heart of the most ethereal compositional treatise ever written.

In 1958 Poulenc composed La voix humaine, a one-act opera for soprano and orchestra, based on the monodrama of the same name, written for the Com�die-Fran�aise by his friend Jean Cocteau. In this staging of the end of an amorous relationship, we hear only the woman's side of a final telephone conversation with the man who has abandoned her. The orchestra in this innovative work is used not only to unify the composition, but also to reveal what the voice, laid bare by a moving parl�-chant� style, does not say. Fian�ailles pour rire and Chemins de l'amour, usually for voice and piano, but presented here in an orchestrated version by one of our finest conductors, Fr�d�ric Chaslin, completes this eloquent rendition of works of a bittersweetness that Poulenc transcends like no other.

Ll Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova focus here on the little-known violin concertos of the second half of the eighteenth century. Bringing together the works of Franz Benda and Johann Gottlieb Graun (in a world premiere recording), pillars of the orchestra at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, as well as those of the Venetian virtuoso Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen and the iconoclastic Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (also in a world premiere recording), this album offers a bright panorama of the evolution of the genre, culminating in Mozart's achievements in the last quarter of the century, of which Il Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova offer us a glimpse with the famous Rondo in C K. 373.

Premiered just a few months before the French Revolution, Gr�try's Raoul Barbe-bleue is an op�ra comique with musical and dramatic implications so remarkable they even inspired Offenbach. Raoul Barbe-bleue depicts a cruel gentry from a political point of view, and even dares to mock through comic effects. The mysterious atmosphere that emerges from the drama (reminiscent of Weber's singspiel) stems from refined and elegant musical writing that cannot be compared to Gr�try's naive and simple early works. This premiere recording from Apart�, featuring a brilliant cast under the direction of Martin Wahlberg, reveals a considerable richness that will appeal to both the neophyte and the specialist.

Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord take you on a journey to discovery Duni, the father of op�ra-comique through two of his emblematic works: Les deux chasseurs et la laiti�re, and Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le, recorded here for the first time. Combining musical innovation and comic genius, these two "com�dies m�l�es d'ariettes" were at the origin of the metamorphosis of the light genre, which led directly to Mozart and the singspiel. Duni displayed a wealth of theatricality and an art of 'quiproquo' (misunderstanding), as in Alberti's aria "Ch�re Laurette" (Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le) or the superb final quartet "Ainsi le sort" from Les Deux chasseurs et la laiti�re. Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord, who had already highlighted Mozart's debt to Gr�try, continue their fascinating lyrical epic through the treasures of French opera, fully embracing it's revolutionary spirit and dramatic force.

The ensemble Aedes began it's musical journey with Poulenc, under the impetus of conductor Mathieu Romano. Here, at the head of Les Si�cles, Romano returns to the unclassifiable composer to record two of his major works. In the pious contemplation of the Litanies, here performed in the manuscript version, and the orchestral luxuriance of the Stabat Mater, spirituality is expressed through music that is lively, sensitive and even, at times, sensuous. Sculpting out every phrase and note, always at the service of the text, the ensemble and Mathieu Romano confirm their affinity with the composer's language. As an interlude Mathieu Romano has included a secular piece, O doulx regard, o parler gratieux, by the Renaissance composer Cl�ment Janequin. The boundaries between earthly love and mystical love are thus abolished in favor of pure emotion.

For "Jouissons de nos beaux ans!" the French tenor Cyrille Dubois returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor Gy�rgy Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the eighteenth-century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time. Focussing on haute-contre roles - the haute-contre voice being the ancestor of the leggero tenor, or t�nor l�ger - the program includes some fine excerpts from operas by Rameau, together with some equally beautiful arias and choruses by composers such as Dauvergne, Mondonville, but also Iso, Royer, Berton, and others. Cyrille Dubois is magnificent as Tarsis (in Tarsis et Z�lie by Francoeur and Rebel), flamboyant as Ag�nor (in Les Caract�res de la Folie by Bernard de Bury) and extremely moving as C�phale (in L'Aurore et C�phale by Francoeur). This recital provides a full picture of the Baroque hero - sometimes tender and amorous, sometimes fiery or triumphant - who receives here one of the finest interpretations.

Maxim Emelyanychev's affinity with Mozart is well known, especially when it comes to piano works. In 2018, the conductor and keyboardist treated us to a recording that not only displayed his virtuosity and musicianship, but also revealed his remarkably close understanding of the composer's music. Today, the symphonies are the focus of his first long-term project with Il Pomo d'Oro, an ensemble he has been working with as it's conductor since 2013. As he points out, this project, aiming eventually to provide a complete set of the Mozart symphonies, is unlike anything he has recorded with the ensemble hitherto on period instruments. The approach here is original: each volume will feature an early symphony by Mozart, together with one of his great mature symphonies, which will enable the listener to perceive his many facets, revealed in the course of his development. Each volume will also include a bonus work, featuring a special guest. Inaugurating the series, Maxim Emelyanychev himself provides the hors d'�uvre with Concerto o.23 K.488, played on a fortepiano, before going on to conduct Mozart's Symphonies Nos.1 and 41.

In 1914, Stravinsky, more than ever, was taken up by his interest in pagan Russia and it's folk rituals. He worked on the composition of Les Noces, intended for the Ballets Russes, until 1923. These "choreographed scenes with music and voices" represent, in four tableaux, the Russian folk wedding ritual. Sober, stylised, razor-sharp, Stravinsky's music combines rhythmic brutality with an incantatory force, evoking both the timelessness and the inexorability of that ritual. There were several attempts at different instrumentations of the work. Here Mathieu Romano, the Ensemble Aedes and Les Si�cles present the world premiere recording of the full 1919 version (completed in 2007 by Theo Verbey), written for an ensemble of percussion instruments, two Hungarian cymbaloms, a harmonium, a pianola, and voices. The same unusual instrumentation, clear, incisive, precise, is used for Robin Melchior's arrangement of Ravel's Bol�ro: an unexpected and amazing, suave, and totally successful.

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Arvo P�rt, one of the world's most performed living composers, will be eighty-seven in September. His music has been featured in many films, including Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre and Habemus Papam, Sorrentino's La grande bellezza, Paul Thomas Andersson's There Will Be Blood, Denis Arcand's Les Invasions barbares, and several films by Terrence Malick. A precursor of the Nordic minimalist school, he composes music that is modern, refined and deeply religious. He is the creator of the "tintinnabuli" compositional style. Morphing Chamber Orchestra, an innovative ensemble in the fields of Classical music and crossover, led by it's musical director Tomasz Wabnic, presents a selection of P�rt's most famous works with an all-star cast including Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. They perform the Stabat Mater, a masterpiece of sacred music, presented here in a new arrangement approved by the composer. The program also includes some beautiful songs - Vater Unser, Ein Wallfahrtslied and My Heart's in the Highlands - performed by acclaimed countertenor Andreas Scholl, as well as some fine instrumental pieces - Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Fratres and Summa. These highly committed musicians transport us to a dreamy Nordic world.

Well established in the field of historically informed performance, the Italian ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro has recently expanded: it now includes a choir, and this is it's first solo recording. Conducted by Giuseppe Maletto, the ensemble presents here Gesualdo's fascinating first book of Sacr� Cantiones. Less well known than his madrigals, the nineteen five-part motets that make up this work explore the theme of repentance through the Liturgy of Penance and the figure of the Virgin Mary. The painfully voluptuous chromaticism and the expressive intensity and refinement of the lines make this work one of the most singular of that period. Gesualdo's interpretation of the liturgical text is intensely dramatic and highly personal. Il Pomo d'Oro renders perfectly the mysterious beauty of this music.

Today, with the amount of recordings aimed at rediscovering the buried treasures of past centuries, it is difficult to ignore the work of Rebecca Clarke. Viola player Vinciane B�ranger, along with Dana Ciocarlie, H�l�ne Collerette and David Louwerse, have devoted a recording to the Clarke's works for viola. Both a composer and a performer, Clarke was one of the foremost professional women in England. Her music, at the crossroads of various currents, navigates at different moments through French music, modality, British folklore, harmonic boldness and exoticism. There is, however, no pastiche: Clarke creates her own honey from these trends in order to construct a quite atypical language that is resolutely modern. From her masterly Viola Sonata to the poetic Morpheus, and not forgetting the trio Dumka or the duet Chinese Puzzle, the performers are keen to paint the musical portrait of this iconoclastic composer. The recording is enhanced with the world premiere of Irish Melody, a long lost score that was recently rediscovered.

Written between 1887 and 1890, Gabriel Faur�'s Requiem is among the best-loved pieces in the choral repertory. Traditionally, Requiems are serious, prayerful laments for the dead. Faur�'s was altogether different. In place of the usual somber mood, his is noted for it's calm, serene and peaceful outlook. The composer revised and expanded the work several times, but it is the original version that is performed here using period instruments and performance practices. This sublimne recording, featuring Ensemble Aedes and Les Si�cles led by Mathieu Romano, also includes Poulenc's Figure Humaine and Debussy's Trois Chansons

The most famous tenor celebrates not only his 60th birthday, but also 40 years of an exceptionally rich and varied, and remarkably generous career. A career spent off the beaten track, constantly regenerated, and showing an insatiable curiosity, a temperament, and an extraordinary vocal timbre. Roberto Alagna captivates audiences everywhere. Here he presents a program that is very much in his own image: showing a contagious passion, an insatiable appetite for the exploration of different repertoires and styles, ranging from opera - French, Italian and Neapolitan, German, Polish and Russian - to Italian and French songs, and crossover music with some surprises up his sleeve.