Francois-Xavier Roth and Les Siecles offer us a double-sided portrait of Saint-Saens here. On one side, some of the most fascinating symphonic poems of French Romanticism are revealed in all the shimmering timbres of the period. On the other, we rediscover a composer who enjoyed a good laugh (The Carnival of the Animals also returns to it's original colors), when he was not involved in the early days of the cinema, with the very first music ever composed for a film.
Campra: Messe da Requiem / Daucé, Ensemble Correspondances
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.00$22.01Save 0%Sep 27, 2024
Campra's famous Requiem emerged from a tradition that is still unjustly neglected. Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances offer us an opportunity to discover these maîtres de musique of Notre-Dame who, though now overshadowed by their brilliant colleague, made no less of a contribution to the development of the 'French style' emblematic of the reign of Louis XIV.
A few years after a complete recording of Mozart’s solo piano works that has gradually come to be regarded as a benchmark, Kristian Bezuidenhout has taken all the time he needed to tackle Haydn, the other towering figure of the Viennese Classical keyboard repertory: “Preparing for this recording has been a vivid reminder that it is remarkably difficult to play Haydn’s music well, but that with enough care, and attention to detail, his music has the potential to come jumping from the page. It would be hubris to suggest that I am even close to unlocking any of its secrets, but I am so humbled by the sheer beauty, humanity, wit and delightful irony of this music, that the desire to continue is irresistible.”
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REVIEW:
The listener is drawn in by the myriad subtleties of Bezuidenhout’s playing and by the glorious sounds he draws from his instrument. Soon you’re hanging on every note of this sequence that seems to travel from darkness to darkness. Most important, though, is Bezuidenhout’s playing itself. Technique is obviously not an issue. Decoration, too, is sparing rather than trowelled on. This is the very opposite of ‘look-at me’ pianism.
Rachmaninoff's output of chamber music is small but all the more precious for that. Two absolute gems bear witness to the fact: these ‘elegiac trios’, which were produced by a young composer still indisputably under the influence of Tchaikovsky. However, Rachmaninoff’s personality is already fully present, reaching heights of emotion and expressiveness.
The pieces by Suk and Grieg add a further touch of character to the picture, which is painted with an exceptionally rich palette: the artistry of the phenomenal Trio Wanderer.
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REVIEWS:
The Rachmaninov Trios share not only a sombre soundworld but a clarity of line that’s captured engagingly in these lyrical yet unsentimental performances by the Trio Wanderer. The Wanderers’ performance, a notch faster than many, has an urgency that is highly persuasive. Grieg’s dark and impassioned Andante con moto fits right in after all this, and the disc is rounded off with a sweetly understated Elegie by Suk. – BBC Music Magazine
The Trio Wanderer’s new disc, centred around Rachmaninov’s youthful trios, has all the finesse and subtlety that we’ve long associated with this French ensemble. From the start, though, one thing struck me – how curiously un-Russian these pieces sound in their hands. It’s partly due to their emphasis on clarity of texture, together with a certain Classical restraint.
Antoine Tamestit and Masato Suzuki, Principal Conductor of the famous Bach Collegium Japan, immersed themselves in Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord in order to present this sublime interpretation using a modern viola. The change in instrumentation allows the artists total freedom to rediscover the exquisite qualities of these all too rarely played masterpieces. HARMONIA MUNDI
Isabelle Faust has gone back to the original manuscript sources to offer US her personal vision of these iconic masterpieces of the violin repertoire. In Bach's time, music for solo instruments was still little explored territory, and his Sonatas and Partitas immediately established themselves as a benchmark, technically challenging and brimming with creativity. On the second and final volume of the set, Faust plays the 'Sleeping Beauty' Stradivarius of 1704, kindly loaned to her by the L-Bank Baden-Wurttemberg.
Accompanied by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, Alexander Melnikov captures this feeling admirably in the two Piano Concertos, and perhaps still more poignantly, - "with disarming sincerity and fearless directness," to quote his booklet note - alongside Isabelle Faust in the Violin Sonata Op.134.
In the early eighteenth century, London become the capital of Italian opera. The 1720s witnessed a feverish demand for music that led many foreign virtuosos to move to the city. Concert-loving Londoners relished the last sonatas in the style of the old master Corelli and the works of the youthful newcomer Handel. On their first recording for harmonia mundi, La Reveuse invite us to relive this lively scene.
Tallis: Spem in Alium - MacMillan: Vidi Aquam / Digby, Ora Singers
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$19.69Aug 21, 2020
A musical banquet from the Golden Age. This programme brings together a true choral landmark from the sixteenth century, with its present-day reflection, a commission by Sir James MacMillan. These two monumental, large-scale pieces bookend a ‘tasting menu’ of Renaissance works by Byrd, Tallis and many other composers. Common to them all is a link to Nonsuch Palace, arguably the location of the first performance of Spem in alium, and the centre of a rich vein of Tudor musical patronage.
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REVIEW:
Standing at either end of this programme are the forty-part motets. Spem in alium is very familiar and is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of Tudor polyphony. Suzi Digby directs a performance that is simply magnificent. She had at her disposal a group of expert singers who were positioned in a circle with the conductor at the apex. The combined skills of the musician and the engineers means that, even in “vanilla” stereo the listener gets a very clear sense of the eight separate choirs – goodness knows what the performance would sound like in surround sound! There’s a truly thrilling sound at the points where the full ensemble sings flat-out, but just as impressive are the more subdued passages, which are delivered with admirable subtlety.
It can’t be an easy task to compose a homage to Spem but few composers are better equipped than Sir James MacMillan who has shown a deep understanding of and respect for the music of the Renaissance – notably that of Robert Carver – in some of his previous scores. In the booklet he comments that he “used the Tallis original as an inspiration in the way I utilised the eight five-voiced choirs, and how I moved the music from choir to choir, gradually building the sound up from one to forty voices.” He doesn’t quote from Spem in his score but he has used the structure of Tallis’s masterpiece as an inspiration. For his text, MacMillan used the text ‘Vidi aquam’ from the prophecy of Ezekiel.
As a homage to the great Tudor masterpiece, I’d say that Vidi aquam is an unqualified success. More than that, though, I’d say the work is a masterpiece in its own right. It is a wonderful response to the chosen text. In addition, it challenges both performers and listeners, yet it never leaves the listener behind because it exercises a huge sensory appeal.
The camera work and sound on the DVD is excellent. As for the CD, producer Nick Parker and engineer Mike Hatch have made a fantastic job of the recording. All the smaller pieces benefit from clarity and intimacy of sound. The two big pieces have been captured with great success. You can hear an abundance of detail and when the full ensemble sings out at full volume, the sound is magnificent. John Milsom’s notes are first-rate.
This is a simply terrific disc. I’ve admired all of the previous ORA Singers releases but, considering both the expert performances of the smaller works and the thrilling forty-part performances, I’m inclined to think this is their finest achievement to date.
Four symphonies were enough for Robert Schumann to leave his mark. Without allowing himself to be overawed by Beethoven's shadow, he succeeded from the outset in coining a highly personal idiom, with an astonishing combination of formal rigour and freedom of inspiration. Pablo Heras-Casado and the Munchner Philharmoniker offer their interpretation of this corpus, more mysterious than it appears, which tells of it's composer's passionate and tormented soul.
This set assembles for the first time the Beethoven legacy of the Trio Wanderer. The group's superb interpretation of the Triple Concerto is now presented alongside it's masterly recording of the composer's complete original works for piano trio, a genre inherited from Haydn and Mozart in which Beethoven opened out new horizon.
One morning in 1822, Schubert wrote down an enigmatic text in which all his ghosts seem to take shape: wandering, solitude, consolation, disappointed love. Inspired by this dreamlike narrative, Raphael Pichon, Pygmalion and Stephane Degout have devised a vast Romantic fresco, combining resurrection of unknown treasures with rediscovery of established masterpieces.
Always curious about unjustly neglected repertoire, Louis-Noel Bestion de Camboulas introduces us here to a Mozart we have not met. Above and beyond his church sonatas, works written on commission, pieces meant to showcase a vocalist or an instrument (such as the rarely heard glass harmonica) or as a mark of friendship with another musician, this is a veritable treasure chest of musical gems that reflect the incredible versatility of the Salzburg genius.
Utilising to the full the unique timbres of their period instruments alongside a superb Pleyel piano of 1892, Francois-Xavier Roth and Les Siecles explore some of Ravel's major works. With Cedric Tiberghien and Stephane Degout, two of the finest specialists in this repertory, this recording provides an opportunity to hear many aspects of his colorful, kaleidoscopic world, from the youthful Pavane to the testamentary cycle Don Quichotte a Dulcinee.
For this new instalment of their series devoted to British music of the eighteenth century, the musicians of La Rêveuse take us to London in the 1740s. The leading Italian and German virtuosos Handel invited to play in his orchestra brought a powerful wind of change to English musical life, while the Scot James Oswald achieved the tour de force of making the music of his country fashionable in the drawing rooms of London.
Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin - Mozart: Gran Partita - The great art of musical entertainment When Mozart takes over the popular genre of serenade, it is to transcend it and give it it's nobility. A festive masterpiece of simplicity and emotion, his Gran Partita quickly became a hit! Thanks to the sliced and captivating colours of their period instruments, the members of the Akademie f-r Alte Musik Berlin give full flavour to these two extraordinary serenades, where a tremendous wind of freedom blows. 2021 release.
His debut recording devoted to Schumann offered a brilliant opportunity to discover the name of Samuel Hasselhorn, a young baritone deeply invested in the art of lieder. With his collaborator Joseph Middleton, he now turns to Schubert, in an insightful program evoking some of the themes dear to the Viennese master of song: nature, night-time, parting, absence, and death. Both essential and less familiar songs are featured side by side in this poignant depiction of profound self-reflection that can rank among the most moving examples of what the Romantic temperament has ever produced.
Harmonia mundi is proud to welcome the exceptional countertenor Carlo Vistoli as a new exclusive artist. Here he joins the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin to explore some of Vivaldi's finest sacred music. Alongside the famous Nisi Dominus and Stabat Mater, the quasi-operatic motet, In furore, shows the extravert, theatrical side of Vivaldi's genius, for the purposes of edification, to be sure, but also for our greater delight.
Continuing an old tradition of outdoor music, Mozart raised the serenade genre to an outstanding level of accomplishment. Harmonia mundi's first collaboration with Enrico Onofri and the Münchener Kammerorchester couples Mozart's most famous contributions to the form: Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the "Posthorn" Serenade (with it's picturesque solo for the eponymous instrument) and the majestic "Haffner" Serenade, with Isabelle Faust as guest star.
These recordings, originally released in the early 1980s, are foundation stones for the rediscovery of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's sacred works that was set in motion by William Christie et Les Arts Florissants. For the most part devoted to Christmas music, these pieces radiate all Charpentier's fervor, freshness and elegance, showing him to be truly French, yet nurtured by the sunlight of Italy.
These two albums, originally released in 2015 and 2016, are among the finest of the benchmark recordings that Brad Lubman and his Ensemble Signal have devoted to Steve Reich. They reveal in their inexorable pulse and clarity of texture all the profundity of this music. Far beyond brilliant precision, here is a gripping sense of radiant vitality - a welcome return to the catalog to celebrate the 90 years of this Grand Old Man of the music of our time.
As an admirer of Cherubini, an attentive follower of Spontini's dramatic daring, and a critical but deeply fascinated witness of Rossini's public success, Beethoven was shaping his language in a musical landscape in which the symphony was in constant dialogue with the opera. This fertile state of tension has been newly uncovered by Enrico Onofri and the Munchener Kammerorchester: heard alongside Italian overtures of the time, Beethoven's great symphonies appear newly charged with a theatrical urgency, dramatic impulse and unparalleled intensity.
For his debut recording, Paul-Antoine Benos-Djian and his friends from Le Consort invite us to rediscover a 17th-century repertoire for which they have a particular love, drawn from the Golden Age of English music. Half a century after Alfred Deller's legendary revivals, they have placed their art entirely at the service of the sense of wonder they continually experience when confronted by these sublime works.
Following in the footsteps of Bach and Handel, Felix Mendelssohn and his sister Fanny Hensel wrote some of the most sumptuous choral works of the first half of the nineteenth century. The testamentary Christus, left unfinished at Felix's death, though often overshadowed by Paulus and Elias, forms a veritable trilogy with them. Fanny's early cantata Lobgesang, composed for her son Sebastian's first birthday, offers a joyous, festive contrast to her brother's music.
Shostakovich's String Quartets Nos. 6 to 12, written between 1956 and 1968, are marked by the relative freedom regained after the death of Stalin. In the second volume of their complete set, the Cuarteto Casals explores this period of a dozen years in which the composer never ceased to innovate, constantly handling new geometries and ideas in his structures. This is a key moment in the history of the twentieth-century quartet.
After stopping off in Cothen, Benjamin Alard continues his musical journey through the works of J.S. Bach. Here he focuses on the composer's early years in Leipzig, with the six Trio Sonatas, which he performs on harpsichord and clavichord. The famous 'little keyboard book' of Anna Magdalena takes us into the more intimate world of the Kantor's household.
MENDELSSOHN SCHUMANN & BRAHMS: COMPLETE PIANO TRIO
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$25.49May 03, 2025
Between 2005 and 2020 the Trio Wanderer explored all the piano trios of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms with the unique combination of rigor and poetry for which they are renowned. A landmark in the discography, this boxed set assembles for the first time their complete recordings of these masterpieces of German Romanticism.
