From the overt Romanticism of Saint-Saens to the nostalgia-laden modernity of Poulenc, Bruno Philippe takes us on a journey through (almost) a century of French cello music. Alongside Tanguy de Williencourt, he also performs the cello version of Franck's famous Violin Sonata, one of the absolute peaks of nineteenth-century chamber music.
At once poet and virtuoso, Paul Lewis has rapidly established himself as one of the leading Schubertians of his generation. This boxed set assembling the Viennese composer's major mature works for solo piano - Piano Sonatas, Wanderer Fantasie, Moments Musicaux, Impromptus and Drei Klavierstucke - is sure to become one of the milestones of the modern discography.
After a recording of Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier that earned unanimous acclaim from the press, Andreas Staier now gives us an equally poetic and flamboyant interpretation of the first book. At once architect and colorist, he constantly varies the atmospheres, unfolding an infinite palette of musical landscapes. Under his fingers, this immense cathedral in sound is revealed in all it's thrilling diversity.
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia - patron of the arts, collector, woman of letters and composer - was an extraordinary personality. The flautist Jean Bregnac pays her vibrant homage with a program featuring works by her proteges Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, her mentor Johann Philipp Kirnberger, and the princess herself.
The genre of the mélodie accompanied Fauré like a kind of personal journal. This music voluptuously - and sometimes vehemently - encompasses the meanderings of the soul: dreams, nostalgia, reflections or mirages. Stéphane Degout and Alain Planès take advantage of the iridescent tones of an 1892 Pleyel in their interpretation of some of his finest song cycles, including the testamentary, L'Horizon chimérique.
Bach: A Life in Music, Vol.1 / Agnew, Les Arts Florissants
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.49Apr 05, 2024
In this new series, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants invite us to follow the creative itinerary of J. S. Bach through the times and cities in which he lived. The first instalment introduces us to a young master who remained faithful to the north German tradition of the sacred concerto, but already displayed an intensely personal invention.
Pierre Gallon and Matthieu Boutineau offer us an opportunity to rediscover Couperin's Concerts Royaux in a version for two harpsichords, a rare combination, yet one of which the composer to the Sun King was especially fond. Here is an interpretation at once brilliant and moving of these works full of tenderness, gaiety and invention, a veritable stylistic turning point between the twilight of the Grand Siecle and the dawn of the Enlightenment.
Wagner's genius is often associated with his unique feeling for orchestration. Yet the transcriptions and paraphrases for piano solo recorded here lay bare the beauty and boldness of his harmonic language, with an evocative power unrivalled at the time. Nikolai Lugansky, at once narrator and virtuoso, immerses us in a world where the heroes of legend tell us - and with what loftiness of spirit! - of the torments and aspirations of humanity.
Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin / Prégardien, Bezuidenhout
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.49Aug 23, 2024
This first release in an exclusive recital collaboration with harmonia mundi presents Julian Prégardien's reading of a cycle that explores quintessentially Schubertian themes: nature, love, solitude, death. Taking full advantage of the unique timbres of a Graf-style fortepiano, the young German tenor and Kristian Bezuidenhout create an expressive palette of exceptional variety, full of striking contrasts.
The Nocturnes and Barcarolles are key works in Fauré's output for solo piano that reflect his stylistic evolution. From his early efforts, still close to Chopin and Schumann, to the final pieces with their heady yet elusive harmonies, Aline Piboule invites us to rediscover a whole world of sound on a sublime Gaveau instrument of 1929.
The three works on this album evoke the worlds of commedia dell'arte (Pulcinella), Don Quixote (El retablo de maese Pedro) and picaresque Spain (the Harpsichord Concerto). Telling their stories with color, rhythm and humor, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pablo Heras-Casado and Benjamin Alard (playing a sumptuous Pleyel harpsichord) invite us to an exhilarating fireworks display.
SCHUMANN TRILOGY. COMPLETE CONCERTOS & PIANO TRIOS
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$31.99Jan 26, 2024
These albums left their mark on the Schumann discography: performing the works on period instruments, the artists suddenly revealed unexpected textures and sonorities. This boxed set assembles the three discs for the first time, with a bonus Blu-ray of the three concertos and the Overture, Scherzo and Finale in concert at the Berlin Philharmonie.
Monteverdi: Vespro Della Beata Vergine / Pichon, Pygmalion
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$23.84Feb 16, 2024
After Stravaganza d'amore, their superb album of late sixteenth-century Florentine music, Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion returned to Italy, this time to Mantua. Here they offer us their reading of one of the peaks of sacred music from this period: Monteverdi's Vespers. Revealing like no other interpreters the poignant interiority of these pieces, they bring out to the full their inherent sense of theatre for an overwhelming experience.
Conversation - Gaspard Le Roux: Suites for 2 Harpsichords / Taylor, Christie
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.00$22.01Save 0%Jun 28, 2024
An outlier in the French harpsichord world, Gaspard Le Roux composed music of unique inventiveness and richness at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. Juxtaposing his pieces with others by Lully, Marais and Francois Couperin, William Christie and Justin Taylor have found the ideal alchemy to do full justice to the myriad colors of these Suites, as virtuosic as they are rich in new emotions.
For their very first recording with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert's celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov's Trompe-l'œil, written specifically 'to echo' the Fantasy. This porgram is an intriguing hall of mirrors.
Icelandic music of the last half century is the focus of this recording by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, led by it's conductor, Graham Ross. Born from his close collaboration with the native composers of the 'Land of Fire and Ice', this program sets out to explore and highlight their hypnotic soundworld, instinctively leaning towards contemplation. A prime example is the touchingly beautiful Requiem by Sigurður Sævarsson, which here receives it's world premiere recording.
In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instills a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances - also eminently popular in their inspiration.
The narrative of the last hours of Christ's life by the German poet Barthold Brockes inspired Telemann to write one of the most powerful Passion settings of the early eighteenth century. In 2009, Rene Jacobs revealed this somewhat neglected masterpiece in all it's splendor, arousing justified enthusiasm from press and music-lovers alike. This is now a benchmark version.
Under the fingers of Adam Laloum, Schubert's music becomes a journey. The emotions that enrich it are those of a deeply human artistry and the murmur of a voice that still moves us 200 years after falling silent. Adam Laloum's way with Schubert is unique, as his first album (Sonatas D894 and D958) so eloquently demonstrated. A new world awaits us here with the Sonata D959 and the Moments musicaux, whose unassuming title belies the lasting impact they have had on piano lovers.
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the lied increasingly took on orchestral garb. The boundary with opera became almost impalpable. That is what Samuel Hasselhorn and Lukasz Borowicz demonstrate here, in a splendid program mingling smiles and disillusionment, where some of the most characteristic orchestral lieder and operatic arias of this Austro-German 'fin de siecle' era blend perfectly together.
Far from the dark, tortured image often associated with his music, the works on this album testify to an astonishingly serene period in Schumann's life. A fine subject for this first album by the Hanson Quartet for harmonia mundi, whose members are partnered by Adam Laloum for a thrilling reading of a masterpiece of the Romantic repertory: the Piano Quintet.
'The happy years': an expression that is particularly apt for J. S. Bach's period in Cothen. Freed from the obligations that held him back in Weimar and not yet caught up in the Leipzig treadmill, Prince Leopold's protege produced masterpieces of such flamboyance that Benjamin Alard could not resist the pleasure of inviting some of his dear musician friends to join him around the splendid three-manual harpsichord by Hass.
Dutilleux: Tout un monde lointain... Metaboles - Symphonie No. 1 / Queyras, Gimeno, Luxembourg Philharmonic
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.00$22.01Save 0%Apr 19, 2024
The symphonic universe of Henri Dutilleux is a fascinating one. Mysterious and poetic, always remarkably expressive, his music explores the thousand and one colors of the orchestra with unique mastery. Gustavo Gimeno and the Luxembourg Philharmonic give us a flamboyant reading of three masterpieces from the composer's first creative period, showcasing the superb cello playing of Jean-Guihen Queyras in Tout un monde lointain.
For their first collaboration on harmonia mundi, Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna explore the world of Bruckner. The first instalment in this series is his tremendous Symphony No.4. An apotheosis of architectural rigour and poetry, this cathedral in sound, thanks to the unique sonorities of the period instruments played by the Bruges orchestra, regains it's lightness and elegance in dazzling orchestral colors!
Cello Dreams - Berceuses for Cello and Piano / Bertrand, Amoyel
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$22.00$22.01Save 0%Sep 27, 2024
With this delightful program of lullabies and a few gentle serenades, Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel explore the deepest sources of musical emotion: melodies that touch, console, comfort and soothe. These little pieces, brimful of tenderness and love, are at once a marvelous entry point to listening to music for the very young, and a treat for experienced music lovers.
After being subjected to public attacks by the Soviet regime in the mid-1930s, Shostakovich sought new avenues of self-expression by turning to chamber music, and the string quartet became for him the perfect medium for private confession. To launch their complete Shostakovich cycle, members of the Cuarteto Casals offer deeply insightful readings of the first five quartets-works that are pivotal in the composer's oeuvre.
In this highly original program, Julien Libeer and his partners bring us the smile and the light of Mozart via an absolutely radiant sonata for solo piano, a sonata for violin and piano in which joy triumphs over anxiety, a flamboyant trio from the time of Le nozze di Figaro, to say nothing of the Piano Quartet K478, a rare combination that allows the composer to play around on the frontiers of the concerto and chamber music. All of this in a surprising dramatic progression.
For the second volume in this series devoted to each new stage in Bach's life, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants show us how the composer appropriated the usages of the church cantata to his own ends. Borrowing from the French style and reinterpreting the Italian concerto, he left a lasting mark on the genre and blazed a new trail for it.
Pursuing the 'new practice' introduced by Monteverdi, seventeenth and eighteenth-century composers in the Italian tradition explored a myriad of human emotions, all the more eagerly because lovers generally come in pairs. From Monteverdi to Handel and Vivaldi, Carlo Vistoli and Hugh Cutting vie with each other in virtuosity throughout a program tailor-made for them by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.
