Paul Lewis's recording of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas at once took it's place as one of the great modern sets. To celebrate twenty years of collaboration with the British pianist, harmonia mundi invites you to rediscover some of the finest sonatas from this monument, each with it's own unique character. A splendid opportunity to admire Paul Lewis's infinite range of touch, with it's combination of rigor and imagination, which brings out all the poetry of these famous works.

Pell�as et M�lisande has taken it's place as one of opera's greatest masterpieces. Debussy deployed a unique style in this work, flexible and natural, never forcing the prosody of words and phrases. In this new historically informed interpretation, Fran�ois-Xavier Roth and Les Si�cles have endeavored to do justice to this music that is at once so strong and so delicate, supported by a handpicked cast of today's finest French singers.

Bruno Philippe conceives Bach's Suites for solo cello as a veritable existential journey, from life to death and resurrection. Forgoing metal strings for their historical gut equivalents, the young French artist offers us an inward, deeply moving reading of this monument of instrumental music.

Nadia and Lili Boulanger, each in her own way, made a lasting impact on the musical world of the twentieth century. Sometimes luminous and full of hope, sometimes more somber, all their works testify to a poignant humanity. Going beyond the m�lodies, Lucile Richardot, Anne de Fornel and the other artists assembled for this edition offer a multi-faceted portrait of the two composers, a form of musical narrative containing pieces that have never been published or recorded before.

In the autumn of 1726 Bach embarked on a series of solo and dialogue cantatas for the first time, in which the virtuoso skills of individual soloists were given pride of place rather than a choir. The poet of this impressive series of solo and dialogue cantatas has recently been identified as the Leipzig theology student Christoph Birkmann (1703-1771), later a pastor in Nuremberg. He reported that he "diligently kept company with the great master, Herr Director Bach, and his choir, and also attended the Collegia Musica in the winter". Among the 'Ich' cantatas of late autumn and winter 1726/27 are the two works recorded here, which have been regarded ever since as pearls of Bach's oeuvre. - Twenty five years after harmonia mundi issued the solo cantatas for bass with Peter Kooj, Collegium Vocale and Philippe Herreweghe, Matthias Goerne, together with Freiburg Baroque, presents two cantatas intimately linked to the celebration of the Lutheran Reformation, as we celebrate it's 500th anniversary. The recording has had a long period of fruition, what with Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, and soon Wagner, but this new disc should make it's own mark on the discography, just as permanently as it's illustrious predecessor.

Paul Lewis completes his exploration of Schubert's sonatas, begun almost twenty years ago, with three early masterpieces. The Sonatas D.537 and D.568 display the daring and freshness of their youthful creator, while with D.664, dazzling in it's artless charm, he already opens a window towards new musical horizons.

With it's forty-five chorale preludes, the Orgelb�chlein bears witness to a mastery of the art of improvisation on the organ, as the congregation heard it at the time before singing the hymn in it's turn. It was a tempting experiment to revive this primary function: by collaborating with the combined forces of the Ensemble Vocal Bergamasque and the Ma�trise de Notre-Dame de Paris, Benjamin Alard gives the 'little organ book' it's full significance and expressive power.

Always curious about unjustly neglected repertoire, Louis-No�l 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.

Invisible Stream: the "unseen currents" are those that connect people and musical works by transcending styles or customary aesthetic and cultural boundaries. A feast of poetic expression organized by four key representatives of both the classical and jazz music scenes of today, this record initiates a dialogue - motivated by the purest spirit of improvisation - between the compositions of Rapha�l Imbert and those of Schubert, Wagner, and Ornette Coleman.

A lover of historical keyboard instruments, Alexander Melnikov has already successfully met the challenge of exploring 'Four Pieces, Four Pianos' on record and in concert back in 2018. Today, he has chosen to perform seven emblematic works of the fantasia genre on harpsichord, fortepiano, tangent piano, early grands, and so on. In this journey through the keyboards of time, we can discover these pieces as they sounded at the time of their creation, but also grasp the invisible thread that links them to each other.

Twenty years after his harmonia mundi recordings reviving the tradition of performing the great French harpsichord composers (Rameau, Couperin) on the piano, Alexandre Tharaud now joins forces with his longstanding partner Jean-Guihen Queyras to explore the works of Marin Marais on piano and cello. Drawing on their respective experiences in Baroque music, the two artists have taken up the challenge of presenting the essence of the master of the viola da gamba: timeless and even universal.

C�dric Tiberghien has long been interested in the principle of Beethovenian variation, as is demonstrated by a recording he made for harmonia mundi twenty years ago. He now proposes a project on a quite different scale, in which all Beethoven's variation cycles will be juxtaposed with works illustrating the evolution of the genre, from the Renaissance to the present day. Here is the first part of a trilogy that promises to be fascinating.

The orchestra of Le Consort, in the course of it's exploration of Vivaldi, reveals the many facets of this inexhaustible cycle. To achieve this, Th�otime Langlois de Swarte has held up a subtle mirror to other works by the 'red-haired priest'. All of them perpetuate the seasons in their own way, through shared memories and impressions; in the background Lambranzi's Venetian dances complement this musical picture awash with colors.

After two albums devoted to Ireland and Scotland, Alix Boivert and The Curious Bards cross the North Sea to Sweden and Norway. Rejecting the artificial distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music, they give us a chance to hear the colorful and varied world of eighteenth-century Scandinavian songs and dances.

What can our ears really perceive when music deviates from a norm whose codes are no longer our own? Geoffroy Jourdain explores the 'strange harmonies' characteristic of the late Renaissance, as in the microtonal pieces of Nicola Vicentino (which divides the octave into 31 notes in a nod to Ancient Greek music). In her new work VicentinoOo, Francesca Verunelli pays tribute to him by following his example.

With selections ranging from Praetorius to Britten, plus all-time favorites such as J.S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Handel's Messiah, this album brings together some of the most beautiful and justly famous musical settings of the Nativity story. Festive or intimate, exuberant or elegiac, these highlights from iconic recordings in harmonia mundi's voluminous catalogue are an ideal sampling of the Christmas magic across epochs and styles.

After a formidable first volume, C�dric Tiberghien continues his exploration of Beethoven's corpus of variations. At the heart of this new album are the famous Thirty-two Variations in C minor and their tangy reminiscences of Bach - the Ciaccona from Partita No.2 for violin solo, presented here in Brahms's masterly transcription. He also takes the opportunity to show us what a certain school of American composers (Crumb, Cage, Feldman) has made of this tradition of variation form.

In their first release on harmonia mundi, Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra offer us a dazzling reading of the Turangal�la-Symphonie. Equally attentive to architecture and to detail, they glorify the rich and refined orchestration of the French composer's vast hymn to love, always on the lookout for unprecedented sonic alchemies. This album is a unique musical and sensory experience.

Passionate about travel, Saint-Sa�ns was strongly influenced by the cultural diversity he encountered in North Africa. Zahia Ziouani, as one immersed in these twin cultures herself, is able to shed new light on the composer's travel-inspired works by reflecting them through the prism of traditional Algerian music, ranging from Ahmed El Alaoui to Idir and performed in the company of Rachid Brahim-Djelloul, this is a fascinating musical dialogue.

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.

Following on their impressive debut album [Ex]tradition, the Curious Bards - an early music ensemble founded by violinist Alix Boivert in 2015 - continue to explore material from the Scottish and Irish folk traditions preserved in 18th-century publications. This new collection of airs and dances is a chance to discover more of this fascinating repertoire, in which the distinctions between serious music and popular inspiration need no longer apply.

Ever since it's release in 2011, this album has been one of the jewels of Isabelle Faust's discography, with Daniel Harding and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra providing tremendous accompaniment in the concerto. The coupling is a poignant reading of the delicate and highly personal Sextet no.2. "Her performance is wonderfully proportioned... never grandiose nor unnecessarily rhetorical, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra supplying perfectly scaled support..."(The Guardian).

After Beethoven, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras now turn to two more giants of the repertory. Chopin's Cello Sonata, his last work published in his lifetime, seems almost like a testament, sombre and tormented - a world away from the radiance and surging lyricism of the youthful work by Rachmaninoff that it inspired. These two masterpieces by composers from the two chronological extremities of Romanticism, both pianists above all, are ideally placed in perspective here.

in 1961, the discovery of a manuscript caused a sensation in the music world. The archives of Radenín Castle, preserved in the National Museum in Prague, contained the part copy of Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto in C major. Until then, the existence of the piece was known only through the entry in Haydn's own catalog of works; the sheet music, however, had been lost. The first performance in Prague and a first recording as well as a printed edition of the sheet music made the public acquainted with the piece in 1962 - the success was resounding.

Although the concerto was composed between 1761 and 1765, Haydn's first years as Kapellmeister to Prince Eszterházy, the piece presents itself as a fully realized masterpiece. There is no fumbling and experimenting, Haydn masters all formal and structural problems with which a composer in the epoch of the early classical awakening was confronted. With rapid virtuoso passages, it also places high demands on the soloist, and the melody is often enough in the technically demanding high register. Thus, the composition also testifies to the outstanding level of the princely court orchestra. Haydn had already entrusted the cellist Joseph Weigl, who was a member of his orchestra between 1761 and 1769, with several solo parts in his early symphonies. With his C major concerto, he made this extraordinarily talented virtuoso immortal.

The Second Cello Concerto, composed in 1783, also had a checkered history. The composition was dedicated to Anton Kraft, who, according to contemporary testimony, was the "first master of his instrument. Kraft's fame as a cellist seemed to outshine Haydn's esteem as a composer in the 19th century; otherwise it can hardly be explained that he was also considered the composer of the piece for a long time. Furthermore, the work was performed for a long time in an arrangement from 1890, which, although it did not challenge Haydn's authorship, virtually distorted the piece by profound interventions in the musical text. Thus a persistent prejudice of lack of tension and ponderousness against the D major concerto could arise. Only the recovery of the autograph in 1954 restored the work to its original beauty, its cheerfully entertaining tone and its sheer inexhaustible richness of melody.

If the Piano Concertos Nos.19 and 23 are among the most famous in the corpus, it is of course because of their sublime middle movements, but also because they reach the very heights of Mozartian subtlety in terms of orchestration, thematic development and dramatic instinct. The historically informed performances from Kristian Bezuidenhout and Freiburger Barockorchester take the same interpretative approach as earlier volumes in the series, underpinned by an utterly luminous musical discourse.