The publication of this anniversary box set celebrating 60 years of Musiques Nouvelles, a true collector's item, brings the 30-year collection of Cypres to a close in the most beautiful way. The 45 masterpieces recorded here reflect the beautiful aesthetic plurality of the creative music composed in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles during the decade 2012-2022. They are added to the 25 compositions of the previous box set released by Cypres in 2012 for the 50th anniversary of Musiques Nouvelles. These 12 albums constitute a shimmering and radiant sound showcase of musical creation through 70 composers whose works constitute an exceptional musical heritage testifying to the extraordinary vitality of creative music in French-speaking Belgium. Share our taste for exploration and let us invite you on a prodigious journey through 45 unique and hospitable soundscapes, 45 universes with subtle lights.

This recording brings to its conclusion the 30th anniversary season of the Cypres label. In an allusion to Confidentes, the first release in this collection, featuring a duet of talented sisters - Marie and Sophie Hallynck - who have had a long history with our label, there is also a sisterly reference here with Tatiana and Anna Sam(o)uil who realise their dream of recording together. They invite us into their world of enchantment, Il Mondo Felice, with a programme that brings together voice, violin and chamber orchestra around the exceptional artiste Maria Malibran.

A desire to transmit in music the history of the glamorous couple Maria Malibran and Charles de Bériot, its intensity and the exceptional quality of their art. The lesser-known repertoire that Maria Malibran sang, such as the masters of past centuries like Johann Sebastian Bach or Henry Purcell, is performed alongside Italian opera, which is represented on this recording by the Ave Maria from Mascagni and Verdi, which, although later, were chosen for their homage to Marie, in whose honour the singer was baptised. Mendelssohn composed his concert aria Infelice for the musical lovers. They conclude this CD with Morgen by Strauss.

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.

The recording of this Chanson du vent is a celebration of Adolphe Biarent. This greatly neglected composer emerged from the shadows thanks to three album releases by Cypres. The cycle of Huit mélodiesfor mezzo-soprano completes this process aiming as it does to highlight an exceptional musical personality through world premiere recordings. Such an action can only work when based upon the total dedication of thoroughly committed performers who enhance a program inspired by the musical Orientalism, or artistic fascination with Middle Eastern, North African, and Turkish cultures, in vogue at that time.

A veritable musical fresco inspired by the cyclical course of the sun, Circa Diem - "almost a day" - invites the listener on a sonic journey following the rhythm of light. From the peaceful darkness of the deep night to the gentle dawn, from the intense brightness of the zenith to the enveloping warmth of the golden hour, to the shifting shadows of dusk, each stage of the day finds it's musical resonance here. The trio Les Heures Bleues weaves it's common thread around Tomaso Albinoni's Opus 1. A first opus for a first project: the idea of a beginning, where all the musical trajectories to come are already hinted at. The cycle of a day thus mirrors the great cycles of life: gestation, birth, maturity, tranquillity, then evanescence. Four sonatas by Albinoni have been chosen and set in dialogue with different moments in the solar cycle, revealing the expressive richness of this Baroque music in the light of passing time. To anchor this one-day journey in our present, contemporary composers were invited to create works based on the light/sonata correspondence that inspired them most: Virginie Tasset, Max Charue, Patrick Leterme, Jimmy Bonesso, and Muhiddin D�rr�oglu. Their contemporary perspectives extend and renew Albinoni's legacy, inscribing this timeless cycle in a resolutely modern sensibility.

Following the critical acclaim of her first album, Lueurs, released just a year ago by Cypres, the young Belgian composer Apolline Jesupret is back with a second monographic CD entitled Bleu Ardent. This time, the idea originated in the mind of Maya Levy, the night following the creation of the violin concerto Ardeurs Intimes, where the violinist dreamed with the tenacious conviction of the unconscious of an album performed by the two of them. She tirelessly worked on it, developing ideas and proposals, and performs half of the pieces on the record. This concerto is inspired by the inner state one can feel in a love relationship with another. Throughout the work, the contrasting energies that cross the soul find their echo in the music. Bleue, Apolline's first symphonic work, is the color of our planet, of the ocean, and of the rolling wave: we hear strength and fragility, caress and slap, the energy of life and the threat of death - the surprising end, like a corkscrew, like a scorpion's tail. Dans l'air du soir, for solo violin, evokes, from Apolline's admiration for Claude Debussy, seven sharp scents with poetically evocative titles. Inspired by the paintings of painter and composer Julie Theriault, de Glace and de Lave are part of a cycle of sound studies for the piano. The first explores the cold, immutable, and crystalline texture of an iceberg, while the second aims to trace the different states of lava in a magmatic energy and in the force of a volcanic eruption.

Jean-Paul Dessy's music occupies a singular place in the contemporary landscape: it does not submit to any school or current, but traces a ridge, stretched between interiority and expansion, between spirituality and sound matter. Each work is a journey, a ritual of sound that calls on the listener to listen with the utmost acuity, where time seems suspended, as if returned to it's original density. This album is the result of this mutual loyalty, of this long-term exploration. It is also the testimony of a unique, living work that continues to move us, to question us, and to draw, in the infinity of the sound spectrum, a profoundly human imprint.

The programme presented here is particularly interesting from the point of view of Henri Vieuxtemps's Grande sonate concertante op.12, in four movements, a rare work written during the youth of the Verviers composer. Tatiana Samouil won the Grand Prix Vieuxtemps in Verviers in 1998, just after her arrival in Belgium. This prize marked the start of her major international career. She went on to win prizes at the Queen Elisabeth, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky competitions... Henri Vieuxtemps always held a special place in the heart of the violinist, who dreamt of giving the Vieuxtemps sonata a new lease of life in concert halls and on recordings. Her meeting with the brilliant Belgian pianist Johan Schmidt, winner of several major international competitions (Queen Elisabeth, Van Cliburn, Tchaikovsky...) was to make her wish come true! Tatiana Samouil and Johan Schmidt started from the original manuscript to create a new version of the score that is more accessible and readable in terms of interpretation and sound. Louis Vierne's Sonata for violin and piano in G minor Op.23, another rare gem dedicated to Eugene Ysa�e, is considered to be his first major chamber music score and his first unanimously acknowledged masterpiece. It is a masterly work, full of strength, passion and tenderness. A CD between romanticism and modernity that illustrates the stylistic evolution of the French aesthetic with it's characteristics of clarity, balance and elegance.

Does the passport reflect cultural identity or nationality? Belgian by birth, but raised in Seattle in the United States, the question of identity has been a constant in the life of young cellist Pierre Fontenelle. He dedicates his first solo recording to the 21st century America in which he grew up, paying tribute to the diversity of this society. These works reflect the many waves of immigration that have forged this multiculturalism celebrated by the musical environment, a synthesis of European classical music, blues, jazz, rock and, more recently, world music. The album is essentially dedicated to three female composers with whom Pierre has had the opportunity to work: Caroline Shaw, Reena Esmail and Andrea Casarrubios. A forthcoming second volume will be devoted to his native Belgium.

Apolline. From the Greek ""apellos"", which arouses, inspires creation!

We are delighted to present the first monographic recording dedicated to a young Belgian composer whom we are following closely: Apolline Jesupret. Lueurs is a mirror of our society. Drawing inspiration from both nature and the tragic upheavals of history, her often surprising music questions our place as human beings in a world that is accelerating and sometimes overtaking us.

These fascinating compositions are made up of vibrations and oscillations at multiple speeds, like myriad breaths, each with its own virtue. Like tender glances at the things of life, this music is bursting with innovation and optimism! The musicians of Musiques Nouvelles and the Ensemble Hopper made no mistake and brilliantly defend the music of a composer who has not finished making us hear it!

"Echos de la Terre," the first album with Cypres by the highly promising Trio O3, is intended as an aural journey into the immensity and immeasurability of the world around us. Each composition resonates with one of the fundamental elements present in nature. However, the element earth, mentioned in the title of the CD, is not directly linked to any of the four pieces. Rather, it is light (Fiorini) that appears as a crucial element alongside air (Kõrvits), fire (Saariaho), and water (Crumb).

Interpreting these complex works as if they were their mother tongue, Lydie Thonnard, Eugénie Defraigne, and Lena Kollmeier, thanks to their mastery of unconventional playing techniques, bring them to life and fuse their distinct instrumental voices into a harmonious whole, lavishing the listener with unexpected pleasures and profound emotions.

Commissioned by Marc Collet and Ensemble21, Onze Folksongs d'ici et d'ailleurs by Jean-Marie Rens is a complete rearrangement of his Sept chansons traditionnelles flamandes, francaises et wallonnes composed over twenty years ago. This new version calls for a larger instrumental ensemble, since it was rewritten for the lineup of Luciano Berio's famous Folk Songs, to which it offers an original and unprecedented mirror. The challenge here was to preserve the specific character of these Sept chansons while carrying out a massive task of orchestration-arrangement as well as composition. � Luciano Berio is arguably the most prominent figure in contemporary Italian music. He composed the cycle of Folk Songs in 1964 for his wife, the American soprano Cathy Berberian. A remarkable fusion of popular and classical music, they represent a kind of anthology made up of eleven folk songs of various origins that the composer had found on old records, in printed collections or heard directly from friends. � Albane Carrere and the Ensemble21 conducted by Marc Collet approach these two collections with infinite tenderness and a subtle art of evocation. Albane Carrere's mezzo voice weaves the link and travels imperceptibly between these two worlds.

A singular composer, Marie Jaell (1846-1925) made the piano the perfect confidant of her inspiration. In her short pieces for piano four hands, she succeeded in capturing both the changing essence of Nature, with it's storms, perfumes and infinity, and the tremors and anxieties of the human heart in the face of love or the fragility of life. Her two teachers, admirers and faithful friends Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saens are of course present on this recording, as they were in life, alongside their spirited colleague. On their first album at Cypres, the Duo Orloff & Spinnler unveil a figure still too little known today. Marie Jaell's impact on piano teaching has been considerable. Her research into "awareness of movement and the development of sensitivity" led her to publish several groundbreaking books for the time.

Third album of the Akhtamar Quartet with Cypres, Origins combines classical and folk heritage with contemporary creation, inviting everyone to explore shared stories and universal emotions. Since it's creation, the Akhtamar Quartet has enjoyed intertwining classical and folk music and exploring different cultures. This approach is evident on each of it's albums, while promoting a contemporary composer (Eugenie Alecian for Legende armenienne, Cypres - CYP1681, and Judith Adler de Oliveira for Enluminures, Cypres - CYP1684). From Antonin Dvorak to Jelena Dabic, a Serbian composer born in 1982, the music becomes eternal poetry and transports us through the ages. This is an essential recording for chamber music lovers. It celebrates both the romantic heritage, embodied by Dvorak's mature style, and the opening up to a new generation of female composers. With Anzhamanak by Jelena Dabic, this contemporary piece offers a unique sound experience with original timbres and reveals the full expressive power of the Akhtamar Quartet.

For her second album with Cypres, Laurence Mekhitarian has devised a programme combining the music of Robert Schumann with that of Gyorgy Kurtag, as it seemed obvious to her that their worlds share a profound emotional kinship. Certain works by Kurtag, such as the Trio Hommage a R. Sch. And Quasi una fantasia, bear direct witness to this. Alongside Schumann's Waldszenen, Laurence Mekhitarian has chosen to include three excerpts from Leos Janacek's cycle Sur un sentier recouvert and to play each of these pieces alternately with miniatures by Kurtag from his ten collections of Jatekok. The pianist has followed a free path here, guided by echoes, resonances, contrasts and sonic affinities. Kurtag has been part of her musical life for nearly forty years, both as a performer and a teacher. His high standards, his depth and his humanity have had a profound impact on her. In her view, he embodies a rare and essential way of being in the world through art. This programme has been constructed with curiosity and wonder, allowing the works to dialogue with each other. Kurtag's pieces - Fleurs, Objet trouve, Jeu avec l'infini - open up a sound space beyond the keyboard. They lead us to the Waldszenen, like a door to a world waiting to be explored. Each of Kurtag's miniatures is a tribute, a memory, a message. The journey ends with a transcription of a Largo by Johann Sebastian Bach, followed by a piece by Artur Avanesov (Modulatio, as a hidden track...).

For elodie Vignon, the decision to record Debussy's complete piano works in chronological order was born of what the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was in Debussy's day: a revelation! For her, playing this music is like entering a cocoon that belongs to you alone. This first volume (generous with 2CDs) of the three that will make up the complete works, naturally begins with Debussy's early works, pieces directly inspired by poems by Mallarme and Verlaine and which embrace the mysterious dimension of the sensory imagination. In the years that followed, he increasingly freed music from the polarisation exerted by the tonal note, keeping the sound space open and ultimately initiating spectral music. Debussy liked to draw inspiration from memories when composing, in order to maintain a distance between his own emotions and those he wished to arouse in the listener. Alfred Cortot spoke of evoking sensations rather than feelings, thus rejecting the late-Romantic aesthetic of emotional identification between composer and listener: an obligation that seemed too constraining to Debussy to be able to give rise to an open dialogue with the listeners of his work. Giving the impression of being invented as it is played, Debussy's music invites us to dream, to better understand the complexity of the world.

For her first project at Cypres, young Belgian pianist Cassandre Marfin thinks big and has come up with Jusqu'a la nuit, a triptych devoted to chromesthesia, one of the many forms of synesthesia known to date. Synesthesia refers to the general alliance of two senses within the brain of an individual. Chromesthesia, on the other hand, refers specifically to the association between colours and sounds. Each volume of this trilogy is dedicated to a primary colour: blue, yellow and red. This first volume focuses on blue, which is undoubtedly the colour most present in music and the one most appreciated in the Western world. According to Cassandre Marfin, it evokes the world of night and dreams, something intangible and indefinite. It is a source of multiple representations in our imaginations. Through a skilfully conceived programme, the pianist associates this colour with ideas, metaphors and compositional systems that allow us to form our own personal impression of blue.

For the fourth solo album by pianist Élodie Vignon on Cypres, we have long been dreaming of a recording with orchestra! And so begins this fruitful collaboration with Eric Lederhandler, head of the Czech Virtuosi ensemble, of which he has been guest conductor for the past twenty years. Just as Élodie Vignon's first three albums which weave links between music and poetry, this one presents a unique programme, designed by Élodie and Eric to give pride of place to both orchestra and piano.

Manuel de Falla's Nuits dans les jardins d’Espagne quickly established itself as a masterpiece, combining finesse with the need to translate popular Spanish folklore with wit. They are an evocation of Andalusia, and more particularly of gypsy music. Gabriel Fauré's Ballade pour piano et orchestra adds a touch of French Romanticism to this programme.

Leader of the Finnish national school, Jean Sibelius appears here in two different guises through symphonic pieces, ranging from the most exalted Retour de Lemminkäinen to the most intimate of The Bard.

The making of this CD is the result of several wishes. The organist and composer Benoit Mernier has been heavily involved since 2015 in the construction by Manufacture Thomas of this new instrument at Saint-Loup in Namur, one of the special features of which is to offer an original great organ inspired by two different styles (Central German and North German Baroque), in short the instrument that Bach undoubtedly dreamed of. The great organ of Saint-Loup thus provides an ideal opportunity to address the question of transmission by tracing the relationship between a master (Buxtehude) and two disciples, one very well known (Bach), the other less so (Bruhns). As well as celebrating the advent of this extraordinary new organ and revealing all it's facets, this recording also marks the performer's sixtieth birthday.

Exploring the classical repertoire from Bach to Nino Rota, but also venturing into lands less usually frequented by the cello, O-Celli transcends the boundaries between classical music and cinema for it's third opus at Cypres. Each theme, each melody tells a story, creating an immersive experience that celebrates the very essence of the seventh art. O-Celli fait son cinema is much more than just a concert, it's a musical journey that will take listeners back to some of their greatest cinematic emotions.

A selection of animal sounds was collected and sampled as if they were notes on an orchestral score. This 'animal music' was then reproduced and human instrumentalists played their classical score in dialogue with it. In this way, the animals become musicians and a fusional dialogue is created with the human musicians. The Bat's song used the bats' ultrasounds and slows them down extremely to bring those within the range audible to humans. These 'songs of the inaudible' are then combined to create a real choir, blending with the discreet voice of the cello. Fable Ineffable features the songs of whales, dolphins and wolves, accompanied by a string orchestra. This work explores the spiritual connection between humans and animals. Rest Forest is an ode to our mammal brothers and uses their voices to create a peaceful atmosphere. It includes sounds of bears, jackals, elephants and lynx, among others. The Prey's Prayer is an imaginary aviary made up of sampled songs and incognito flutes. The piece is akin to a bird's meditation on the human condition. Or the other way round

Amorosa, a multicultural musical band based in Brussels, is driven by the voice of Stéphanie Scultore who sings about love in French and Portuguese, drawing us into her poetry between the warmth of Brazilian rhythms and the elegance of jazz harmonies. Amorosa's music is generous. Sometimes voluble, sometimes calm. At once intimate and universal, it draws its uniqueness and its modernity from the way it mixes genres, textures and registers while drawing on popular traditions.
Petit Soleil is an album full of love and humor. Stéphanie drew her inspiration from both the birth of her son and the death of her mother a few months later. The music is a tribute to those who are leaving and those who are coming: the people who live within us, the people who are dear to us and accompany us at every moment in a cycle that renews itself endlessly. Each song pays tribute to a place or a person and evokes something of the sky in the form of dialogue, contemplation, poem, prayer, reverie or legend, telling a story that is both intimate and collective, forming a patchwork of a great landscape.
The time of an album, a day or a lifetime, we sit down facing the sea and the sky to rediscover stories and listen to songs, to remember where we come from…

Soundfulness, the new collection of the Cypres label, is an invitation to plenitude through sounds, frequencies, vibrations and breath. Soundfulness creates a space for dialogue between musical cultures, at the crossroads of traditional, sacred and meditative music. Immediately accessible and sensitive, this music is like an inner journey: it opens our horizon, inspires us and connects us to our deepest roots. To listen to Soundfulness is to offer oneself a time filled with healing sounds, to salute the spirit and the force of nature and to open up to the meditative powers of sounds. Trust in the integrity of the musicians chosen to bring you into new sound rituals. Based on Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum (ca. 1151), an electro-medieval oratorio combining Gregorian chant, samplers, synthesizers and cello! Ad Lucem is an intimate and meditative contemporary oratorio for voice, cello and electronics, which takes us into the high spiritual spheres of the soul and invites us to immerse ourselves in an experience of transcendence. Of dramatic and liturgical essence, the original work takes up the story of a human Soul in the grip of doubt and the temptation of Evil, which invokes the divine Virtues to help it fight the Devil. These allegorical characters will take the floor in turn, detailing what makes them strong, and unite in a heavenly army. Jean-Paul Dessy and Romain Dayez bring to light the monodies and Latin texts through their own musical language.

This album, Ustica, marks a further stage in the firmly established relationship between Beno�t Mernier and the record label Cypres, which over the course of 25 years has traced the evolution of the composer's musical language and the affirmation of his artistic identity. It will be released to coincide with the premiere of his new opera, Bartelby, at the Op�ra Royal de Wallonie. Ustica marks a milestone in this collaboration, painting a portrait of a composer and offering testimony to a long-standing artistic partnership. Ustica reveals a moment of maturity in which formal rigour, poetry, and memory intertwine. The two symphonic movements contrast a contemplative adagio shaped by Baudelaire (Comme d'autres esprits) with a bright, virtuosic scherzo (Sur un ciel immense), a joyful tribute to Philippe Boesmans. Offering, for alto voice and ensemble, sets three spiritual poems by Rabindranath Tagore to music in a continuous flow moving from longing and hope to joy. Deux po�mes pour violon et piano, dedicated to Jacques de Decker, explore memory through a playful and light-hearted style of composition consisting of fragments and snippets. Finally, Ustica, inspired by a poem by Octavio Paz, unfolds an orchestral meditation on life, death, and memory that oscillates between sun-drenched stillness and the mysterious fluidity of incantatory melodies.

An album entirely devoted to the trombone - that's rather unusual! de proche en proche, Belgian composer Michel Fourgon's second monographic disc on Cypres, features the instrument in a variety of configurations, in stages spanning some twenty years: from solo pieces (with Alain Pire as soloist) to concertos with symphony orchestra and choir (OPRL and Choeur de Chambre de Namur), via several chamber music repertoire arrangements and a surprising and delightful exchange between baroque (Les Agremens) and modern (ORCW) chamber orchestras tuned a quarter tone apart. Accompanied by Alain Pire, his long-time collaborator, Michel Fourgon explores all the resources of the instrument in a joyful kaleidoscope with an aesthetic rigour that never distances him from what he considers to be "his" voice at the heart of the music of his time.