Classical Music

Classical Music

There's a fascinating issue in the aesthetics of the romantic period: the degree to which composers "choke" when dealing with first-movement form in their concertos. Brahms, of course, made this challenge one of his particular strengths, and Dvorák's three concertos solve the problem in three very different but imaginative ways. But very few other composers emerge unscathed from their battle with sonata form, concerto-style, and Joseph Jongen doesn't quite manage it here. To his credit, though, he comes very close. His Cello Concerto opens with a wonderful orchestral build-up launching the entrance of the soloist, and only a certain lack of melodic distinction prevents the movement from being a total success. Clearer differentiations between the first and second subject groups would have provided greater formal definition, but either way the music is quite attractive.

Jongen has no problem at all once that first movement is out of the way. The slow movement is gorgeous, with a particularly delightful middle section in quicker tempo, while the finale (another place that many composers come to grief) really does provide an ideal combination of nobility and liveliness to what in the final analysis is a very serious statement. Soloist Marie Hallynck plays very well, as does the orchestra, and Roman Kofman conducts with seeming confidence. I only say "seeming" because it may be that the first movement would have made a better impression at a marginally swifter tempo, but with no comparisons ready to hand in this music it's impossible to be sure. In any event, the two shorter works are wholly captivating, something of a cross between d'Indy and Debussy, and full of color. Here Kofman deserves full credit for leading shapely, sensitive readings before an orchestra that sounds well at home in the music. Excellent sonics too. Very pretty indeed.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

The new release Requiems is a funerary ritual that, in the course of six traditions and sacred languages, invites us to enter into eternity. The Requiems are an invitation, an introduction to rest, to the intangible peace that inhabits the depths of life. A Requiem ought to help us go beyond thought and enter into the rest of the non-mental. Is there a sound, a frequency, a rhythm, a voice that might help us live this? Such could be the function of a Requiem: those who listen to it, by the grace of sound, would enter into this non-space-time, this non-mental and would thus be in communion with the one or with those who have just given their last breath.This album is released simultaneously with Requiem by Jean-Yves Leloup published by Éditions du Relié.

Joel Pommerat writes of his production of the Philippe Boesmans opera, Pinocchio: “Everyone has heard of Pinocchio. He has beome a legend. I have always sought inspiration for my work in the myths of which we ourselves are made. Not only is the story of Pinocchio a powerful one, but the myth of this character is still very much alive, even topical. Pinocchio is a paradoxical character. The moral of his story is not simplistic… Today, as I was ten years ago, I am touched by this story because it combines the exhilarating elements that belong in a tale, such as the epic, the marvelous, the quest as a rite of passage, and universality, as well as something harsher, more social, even political, and unsettling.” Philippe Boesmans’ goal was to be a composer like Wagner. At the age of 45, the self-taught and fiercely independent artist yielded to the allure of the world of opera. By the time he was 80 he had composed 8 operas which, following their premiere productions, have all been repeatedly performed in new productions in the most prestigious opera houses.

As one of the cruel realities of competition, the winners switch from glory to complete oblivion after a few ephemerous mediatic sparks. When Marie-Nicole Lemieux won the Queen Elisabeth Singing Competition in 1998, nobody knew she would become the contralto of her generation, and nobody knew - even if many guessed at it - that she would become one of the most versatile singers imaginable as well as a first-class tragedian. In August 2000 the producers of Cypres were the first to offer her a recital with the pianist Daniel Blumenthal. Programmed was nothing less than Les Nuits d'été, the Wesendonck and the Rückert-lieder - three cycles of lieder counted among the most intense of the repertory. The calm trembling of the contralto in Berlioz, its poignant dignity in Mahler and its heightened expression in Wagner made this record into an undeniable commercial and artistic success. More than ten years have passed since; Marie-Nicole Lemieux today appears on the biggest stages in the world, and this "historic" record reminds us that even at the beginning of her career, the singer from Quebec was already the genius performer we know today.

Classical Music

A history of the Requiem' takes the music-lover on a journey through the very varied history of the requiem. Presenting one work per century seemed to be just right for illustrating the evolution of this, one of the most significant musical forms in the history of music. The first part of the series, devoted to Ockeghem and Lassus, was awarded a '5' by the prestigious magazine Goldberg, and the second part, presenting the requiems of André Campra and Michael Haydn, recorded on period instruments got a 'four stars' from Le Monde de La Musique. Begun towards the end of 1848, Anton Bruckner's Requiem was completed on 11 March 1849. It was performed for the first time on 13 September 1849 at Sankt Florian. Dissatisfied with it, Bruckner reworked it in 1854 and again in 1894, then according it a 'This is not bad!?, despite his acute sense of autocriticism. Almost nothing hints at the extraordinary symphonist to come, but he makes great strides towards the choral writing of later masterpieces such as the Te Deum and the masses. Maurice Duruflé's Requiem was the response to a commission from the publisher Durand and was written by Duruflé in memory of his father. The piece poses an interesting problem: written in 1947, it is a near contemporary of works as radical as Le Soleil des eaux (1948) of Boulez or the Quatre Études de rythmes pour piano (1949) of Messiaen. In appearance, the Requiem shares hardly any of the preoccupations prevalent in France at this time. Yet, success was immediate, and was even greater subsequently in the United Kingdom and in the USA, where it has never flagged: there, the work continues to enjoy an exceptional reputation. Lying fairly clearly within the tradition of Fauré, Duruflé's Requiem resembles the older work in its overall character of calm and meditation.


Composers:
Anton BRUCKNER
Maurice DURUFLE

Performers:
LAUDANTES CONSORT
Guy JANSSENS (Conductor)
Benoît MERNIER (Organ)
Elke Janssens (Soprano)
Penelope Turner (Mezzo)
Roel Williams (Tenor)
Arnout Malfliet (Bass)


Track Listing:
Anton Bruckner Requiem
1. Requiem
2. Dies irae
3. Domine
4. Hostias
5. Quam olim
6. Sanctus
7. Benedictus
8. Agnus Dei
9. Requiem
10. Cum sanctus

Maurice Durufle Requiem
11. Introit
12. Kyrie
13. Domine jesu criste
14. Sanctus
15. Pie jesu
16. Agnus dei
17. Lux aeterna
18. Libera Me
19. In paradisum

Total timing: 72.59

The Ô-Celli ensemble brings together eight talented cellists, soloists, chamber musicians and concert performers. For their 10th anniversary, they combine their energies and share with you their vision of the American dream. Eight cellists come together in an astonishing program, in love with freedom, singing that everything is possible. Each arrangement is a challenge for them. It reflects an innate sense of pleasure in the service of music, inviting opera, jazz and blues. Composer Harold Noben offers them his vision of America through the triptych American wanders, while Michel Herr composes an astonishing Duke Ellington medley.

A carte blanche, offered by the Cypres label, invited us to discover the sound universe of composer Pierre Slinckx by simultaneously publishing his first two albums: C#1 for large organ and electronics and M#1 for string quartet and electronics. Today, Pierre Slinckx brilliantly pursues his quest to integrate electronics into chamber music in order to erase the boundaries between synthetic and natural music. H#1, written for the Ensemble Hopper, is an ecstatic trip through radiant, powerful, somewhat psychedelic waves of endlessly blossoming sounds and obsessively rising textures.

From Corsican songs to "Madame rêve," from Greek songs to "La Belle abandonnée," in this carte blanche artist self-portrait, the mezzo-soprano Albane Carrère displays her voice in all its colors, its potential, its daring. These songs born of “someone on earth”, songs of which the origin is most often unknown and anonymous, have been gradually collected by us for this album, being chosen for the quality of their settings, fashioned by those composers who are most like goldsmiths, the better to reveal the universal beauty. There are also some recent French and Belgian chansons, closer to us and thus less anonymous, yet always in the vein of traditional song, in which the voice, interwoven with the cello, follows the poetic play of Jean-Luc Fafchamps.

Laure Stehlin writes: “A singular and timeless musical world, Orées is an initiation into fully conscious listening. My music is a link with all that vibrates, that throbs. It facilitates presence to oneself and enables an opening out beyond oneself. The edges (orées) are frontiers where the visible and the invisible meet, the audible and the unheard of, the perceptible and the mysterious, the real and the imaginary. Orées was conceived like a sound cabinet, in reference to the cabinets of curiosities which housed a multitude of rare objects representing the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds, in addition to human artefacts. For me the tone-color of the voice or instrument is significant. This is why my instrumentarium is rich: each instrument, through its sonority, establishes a connection with one or more of the five elements that are earth, fire, water, air and ether. My musical pieces lie in between composition and improvisation and are nurtured by an intimate link with Nature. My Musical Art consists of touching the listener through the subtle effects of the sounds. For each piece, I work from a finely chiseled intention that leads the vibration to a contact that is physical, psychic, emotional and spiritual with the person who receives it. The sound wave, rich with the flux created in this way, nurtures the being, inviting it to plunge into the unfathomable landscapes of its inner world.”

These "Carnets de voyage", which include all of Jean-Luc Fafchamps' pieces for string and keyboard quartet, are intimately linked to the MP4 Quartet. For several years, the four musicians have been taking them everywhere they perform, even to India, where these works are considered to be world music! From "Autoportrait en expirs", which depicts a whole life through the breath (to the last one), to the contemplations of "Nuages vus du ciel", via the electronic delirium of the "Lettre Soufie", Jean-Luc Fafchamps tells us the story of his solitary expeditions to the farthest reaches of the earth. Fasten your seatbelts and turn off the lights, because you can only see well with your eyes closed.

Here below, Mélanie Defize is no longer, killed in the attack on the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels on March 22, 2016. And yet her presence is still alive, her sweet impishness and her curiosity have inspired in us a musical journey that follows her special likes and our own, as though to surprise her one more time. Mélanie worked for the label Cypres from 2014. A passionate lover of ealy music, she was interested in the emergence of a vocal conception for female voices through the madrigals of Maddalena Casulana, the first Western female composer to have been published. This young baroque violinist of 29, musicologist and adept of music therapy, was ever an insatiable researcher who was preparing her university diploma in the history of medicine at Paris Descartes: in this Institute she was a musicologist among cardiologists, a woman among men. Open to all musical genres, attentive to both performers and composers, Mélanie gleaned with serious purpose from art, science and life. Mélanie's Ear is the first album of the collection Cypressentiel, the aim of which is to distil the label's indispensables, the albums for a desert island, the artistic box-sets and the unusual compilations. We dedicate it to her with the same joy that, we hope, she would have had in discovering it. Through this dedication we also pay homage to all the victims of ignorance and barbarity.