A Due Liuti (Thierry Meunier and Jean-Marie Poirier) offer a selection of pieces from the Elizabethan period and beyond. A good number of theses duets are unpublished and recorded here for the first time.

Following his first album of French lute music, Alban Tixier invites us to join him as he explores the byways of European music dating from the 13th to the 15th century.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

How can we live without Mozart's music? It has the power to change our lives and our view of the world. Mozart is a necessity. As children, we already listened to him, and this growing complicity lent itself particularly well to the game of dreaming. Who hasn't whispered to themselves, �What if...�? This is how we imagined Wolfgang travelling to Japan. This uchrony gave us the idea of combining our instruments with the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument, and uniting the two piano quartets with transcriptions of overtures from his operas and pieces written specifically for this project by two great Japanese composers. This journey offers an open view of a Japan so little known in Mozart's time, thanks to five imaginary letters written by the erudite and facetious writer Richard Collasse, author of the Dictionnaire amoureux du Japon and novels set in Japan. Finally, this strange odyssey bears witness to Mozart's infinite source of inspiration for artistic creation, with illustrations by Setsuko Klossowska de Rola and those made by her late husband, the painter Balthus, for the sets of Cosi fan tutte in 1959. What if Mozart had gone to Japan? Let's read and listen.

Many of the trios featured in this boxed set testify to the composer's new interest in the wind instrument, known instead as one of the absolute masters of the string quartet. They were either originally conceived in this way, or transcribed in his own hand, or were published for the first time in England. Could he have intended this choice to honour the particular taste shown for this instrument by London's aristocratic milieu?... This hypothesis is highly admissible: the transverse flute, in fact, before the great changes in it's construction pushed it out of the catalogues of most of the great composers, had ardent followers, including King Frederick II of Prussia, himself a remarkable flautist... And while the difficulty of performance and the originality of the language of these trios may have baffled some performers of the time, they delighted instrumentalists (and composers) justly renowned for their virtuosity, such as the violinist Gavinies in France and the flutist Tromlitz and the violinist Stamitz in Germany. The music of these nineteen trios is full of wit, verve and agility, tenderness and restrained passion.

From the apparition of the stile rappresentativo (Monteverdi's famous Lettera Amorosa) and the monophonic madrigal (Frescobaldi, Negri), to the heyday of bel canto (Carissimi, Stradella, Melani), to it's parody (with the very burlesque and unpublished Lettera del Signor Carlo Antonio Benati alla Signora Vittoria Tesi by Marcello), the letter in music is attempted in the golden age of Italian cantata, by numerous composers. La Gioannina reveals a hidden and exemplary face of the Italian cantata, following it's echoes to a contemporary creation by Vincent Bouchot on unpublished texts of a great poet of our time, Michel Butor. The Gioannina ensemble joins the harp and the lute with their delicate strings for a curious and free exploration of these musical pieces. The ensemble was founded in 2012 by Remi Cassiagne and Nanja Breedijk. In collaboration with Francoise Masset, it made two recordings of Orazio Michi dell'Arpa.

A mysterious opera, an historical piano, two singers, and four instrumentalists. Ensemble Hexaméron presents a rich variety of instrumental and vocal music, thus painting a musical portrait of Paris at the dawn of the nineteenth century; a time when different cultures and genres were at crossroads, and when Mozart was yet to be truly discovered as a composer in France.

Sixty minutes of lute music with a « meditative » feel, made up of works that are both lighthearted and profound. Pieces by the « old-timers » filled with beauty and elegance have corne down to us, and A\ban Tixier, a professional lutenist, performs them with great generosity.

PTR1124

We know Gabriel Fauré the composer well but little the pedagogue. This recording aims to highlight the influence of the composer in France and even in Europe when, in 1896, he became professor at the Paris conservatory taking over from Massenet. The program of this disc wishes to bring together one of the work of his last period and compositions by his illustrious students: Ravel, Lili Boulanger and Enescu.

Bach's six suites for cello (BWV 1007 to 1012) are considered the must-haves of the instrument's repertoire. In this recording, Valérie Aimard offers a generous version that radiates without ever seeking effect for its own sake. With finesse and subtlety, the performer honors Bach's greatness.

With this first-ever musical adaptation of Jean Cocteau's text; whose poetic power and energy have been fully preserved; the Virêvolte ensemble offers a radical new interpretation of the play. In this illustrated book-disc; which unfolds like an accordion to span more than four metres; the wanderings of a timeless heroine are told; sung and drawn. Like a Madame Loyale who is simultaneously a seer and a witch; she seizes the creative force of silence imposed by this "beautiful indifference"; projects her fantasies on the walls of a music-imaginary hall and transforms the lover’s expectation into a gigantic wild and risky fireworks display. She explores all the colours of her emotions; thanks to Jean-Marie Machado's inventiveness; in a succession of numbers ranging from opera arias to songs. Her story unfolds before your very eyes and is brought to life in music; taking you on a breathtaking journey through musical genres and aesthetics.