I believe this project is one of the most important of my life as a keyboard player. On the one hand, because of it's extraordinary richness and prolific content, and on the other hand, because of the strong and so right relationship that Louis Couperin and his work had with the harpsichord and the organ. He knew how to make these instruments sing and vibrate like no one before him and probably no one after him either. Jean Rondeau. A monumental project unlike any other on the market today, Louis Couperin The Complete Works feature all his works, but Jean Rondeau has also selected works by composers Couperin considered his masters and students. The set comprises 10 albums and 1 DVD - a 66 minute film by Erwan Ricordeau, features Rondeau in Colmar's Unterlinden Museum, one of the locations of the recording. He explains the instrument, and his relationship and admiration for Couperin. It provides fascinating insights which are a perfect accompaniment to this Complete Works set. (DVD: region-free NTSC format- picture format: 16:9 anamorphic- sound format: stereo PCM 2.0 language: French, subtitles. English)

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.

Aspiring to Parnassus, the mythological mountain home of the Muses, Jean Rondeau explores the possibilities of the harpsichord in music composed over more than 400 years - much of it for the piano. He pays tribute to the Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux, who in 1725 published the original Gradus ad Parnassum, an influential treatise on counterpoint, and to Muzio Clementi, whose similarly titled collection of piano studies came a century later. The theme continues with Debussy's Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, an affectionate parody of Clementi from the Children's Corner suite. The album's scope extends to the renaissance (Palestrina) and to works conceived for the piano by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Rondeau's Gradus ad Parnassum sensitizes us to what repertoire written for the piano can reveal about the harpischord - and to what the harpsichord can reveal about repertoire written for the piano.

An ode to silence is how harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has described Bach's Goldberg Variations. "I feel they were written for silence, in the sense that they take the place of silence," he says. "All Bach is there in the Goldberg Variations... all music is there... and I will no doubt spend my life working on them." To prepare his interpretation he consulted an original printed edition of the work, containing Bach's own markings and corrections. "Through delving into this precious musicological source, I was able to make what I felt to be the most authentic choices." Rondeau performs the set of variations in it's complete form, with the indicated repeats and with judicious insertion of moments of silence.

2021 release. Melancholy Grace is a poetic collection of keyboard music from the 16th and 17th centuries by composers from Italy, the Netherlands, England and Germany. The French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau has conceived the album as a sombre, but eloquent dialogue between two contrasting voices: melancholy conveyed through chromaticism and melancholy conveyed through the musical expression of tears and weeping. Among the eight 'chromatic' composers are Frescobaldi, Luigi Rossi, Luzzaschi and Sweelinck, while the 'weeping' composers are Dowland, Bull, Gibbons, Valente and Scheidemann (who has an anonymous piece attributed to him). Dowland's Lachrimae Verae (True Tears) closes the program, but in some senses forms the conceptual starting point for the Melancholy Grace.

Decca studio recordings made between 1947 and 1949 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, newly compiled and remastered by Mark Obert-Thorn and including material new to CD. Decca first presented it's 'ffrr' technology - full frequency range recording - in 1944, originally developed by the company's engineers as a means of detecting and identifying German submarines through their engine noises. Following the success of Stravinsky's Petrushka with Ernest Ansermet (made in 1946 and reissued by Eloquence in it's comprehensive series dedicated to the Swiss conductor) other major artists visiting London were invited to make records at the acoustically excellent Kingsway Hall. One of them was Erich Kleiber, who had attracted a considerable following in London through his concerts. 'Audiences did not merely listen and applaud,' remembered his friend, the scholar Jacques Barzun. 'They knew what they were doing.' His repertoire for Decca mirrored his concerts: symphonies by Mozart and Beethoven, overtures by Dvorak and Handel, and Strauss-family favourites, all done with superb attention to rhythmic lift and dynamic balance so that, combined with Decca's pioneering technology, listeners could (and still can) hear inside the scores to a degree still remarkable for the late 1940s. The old ideal of classical 'objectivity' was Kleiber's inspiration for Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony: he was 'a conductor's conductor', observed The Spectator's reviewer, seeing Kleiber in concert at the time of these recordings, who obtained precisely what he wanted with 'instinctive ease and economy of means'. The French conductor Jean Martinon also had a short-lived relationship with Decca in London before making most of his records in the US for RCA. They include deliciously light-textured accounts of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Chabrier's Suite Pastorale as well as another gramophone rarity: the farewell aria for Joan of Arc in Tchaikovsky's opera The Maid of Orleans, sung by the Polish mezzo-soprano Eugenia Zareska.

This new release contains compositions from Hong Kong TV and Movie Classics. Violinist Takako Nishizaki is the featured soloist on this recording. The works are performed here by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Henry Shek, Varujan Kojian, and Kenneth Jean.

Chinese Evergreens contains timeless pieces of Chinese folk music. Performed by Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Kenneth Jean, these songs are given new life for a new generation of listeners. Songs include Plum Blossoms in the Snow, The Evening Bells from Nanping, Flowers Are Not Flowers, and many more.

Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

The Places:

The tour starts in Uzbekistan, of which there are later glimpses. There is a visit to the historic Russian town of Suzdal and scenes from St Petersburg as well as from Ukraine. It would be impossible to avoid the Russian winter, which appears in various guises, providing entertainment for some and for others a seemingly enchanted snow-bound landscape.

The Music:

The music for the tour is taken from Russian composers who were, by and large, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of their country. This is reflected in Lyadov's arrangement of a series folk-songs and his translation of Russian legend into music. Other composers represented are Ippolitov-Ivanov, Kabalevsky and Anton Rubinstein, with two well known excerpts from unfinished operas by Mussorgsky.

Our tour of Italy starts in the countryside near Orvieto, moves to the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, then to Montalcino and it's ancient abbey. We see the Tuscan landscape around Montepulciano, glimpse Siena, and finally see something of the historic building.

At the tender age of 15, Francis Poulenc was introduced to a circle of daring French composers that included Eric Satie and Georges Auric. The experience no doubt left a mark on the young composer, whose style is wonderfully eclectic and ever challenging throughout. Poulenc became a member of this circle, a celebrated group of French composers that also included such luminaries as Arthur Honnegger and Darius Milhaud. Nicknamed "Les Six," they changed the face of French music forever.
This recording, the fourth in a series dedicated to the chamber music of Poulenc, offers a healthy cross-section of the composer's work in the genre, with particular attention paid to his vocal works. Poulenc's music is dizzyingly eclectic, and this recording of chamber music includes his celebrated "cantate profane," 'Le Bal masquè.' The delicious whimsy of 'Le Bal masquè' comes to life in a superb performance by baritone Franck Leguérinel and a talented instrumental ensemble. Purely instrumental works are included as well, including the rarely heard 'Sarabande for guitar,' played by Pierre Laniau with a sensitivity that captures the work's dreamy spirit.

The music of Spain retains it's exotic attraction, with it's individual blend of regional and national elements, influenced by the colorful traditions of the country and of it's former colonies. It was in the nineteenth century, with the growth of nationalism, politically and culturally, that Spanish musical identity became established internationally as something apart from the main European cultural traditions of which Spain had for centuries formed apart. It was natural that something of this fascination with things Spanish should make an early appearance in neighboring France. The French composer Emmanuel Chabrier had spent the early part of his career as a civil servant, resigning his position only in 1880 in order to devote himself to music. Chabrier lacked the thorough training of the Conservatoire, but had been able to study music with some assiduity as a private pupil of a number of teachers of distinction, while mixing socially with a circle of well known musicians, painters and writers. In 1881 Charles Lamoureux made him chorus director and organizing secretary for the new concerts that he was promoting in Paris, his first professional musical employment. It was a journey to Spain in 1882 that aroused Chabrier's interest in the music of that country. Returning to Paris, he composed a fantasia for piano, based on the melodies he had collected, and played it through to Lamoureux, who encouraged him to orchestrate it. The result was the orchestral rhapsody España, first performed under Lamoureux on 6th November 1883. Chabrier won immediate fame, although his continuing operatic ambitions never brought him the success that he wanted. España, a vivid evocation of Spain, uses the contrasting elements of the jota and the malagueña in a colorfully orchestrated work. Manuel de Falla, born in Cádiz in 1876, was the leading Spanish composer of his generation, writing music that captured the essence of all that was Spanish, while proving acceptable internationally. His ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, originally a pantomime under the title El corregidor y la molinera (The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife), is based on a story by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. The plot concerns the jealousy of the miller, whose attractive wife has been subjected to the attentions of the elderly Corregidor. The ballet was first staged in London in 1919 by Dyagilev's Ballets russes, with décor by Picasso and choreography by Leonid Massin. The excerpts included here start with the Fandango for the miller's wife, followed by a Segnidillas for the neighbors, a Farruca for the miller and a final Jota. Manuel de Falla's opera La vida breve ('Short Life') was completed in 1905, before the composer left Spain for Paris, and was first staged in Nice in 1913, a year before de Falla's return to Spain. It's plot concerns the betrayal of the gypsy girl Salud by her lover Paco, who marries a girl of richer background. Salud, appearing with a companion to dance for Paco and Carmela's wedding-guests, falls down dead, as she moves forward to accuse Paco. An Interlude marks night-fall, leading to the well known Spanish Dance of the wedding-guests, familiar from arrangement after arrangement. El amor brujo ('Love the Magician'), staged in Madrid in 1915, made full use of the traditions Spanish gypsy music. It tells the story of a gypsy girl Candelas, haunted by the spirit of her dead lover, which she summons up in her ritual fire dance, in the original version the Dance of the End of the Day. A dominant figure in French opera towards the end of the nineteenth century, Jules Massenet based his opera Le Cid on the play on the subject of the Spanish hero by Corneille. The opera was first staged at the Paris Opéra in 1885. The Spanish dances on which much of the present reputation of Massenet's opera depends come in the first scene of the second act, a contrast to the tragic events that have taken place. At the heart of the drama is the conflict in the heart of Chiméne, whose lover Don Rodrigue, El Cid, has killed her father. Massenet offers, in his ballet scene, a series of characteristic dances. Composers in the newly developed Russian nationalist tradition also had recourse, as Glinka had done, to the exotic, whether to bordering countries, to the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire or to remoter Spain. Rimsky-Korsakov's famous Capriccio Espagnol began as a Fantasia on Spanish Themes, for violin and orchestra, and was eventually completed in it's present form in 1887. The work won immediate acclaim, above all for the brilliance of it's orchestration, an achievement from which the composer drew great satisfaction. The French composer Maurice Ravel was the son of a Swiss father and of a mother from the Basque country. He was familiar from childhood with Spanish culture and language and had occasion to make use of this element in his background in a number of compositions. Boléro, which he himself described as an orchestrated crescendo, was written for Ida Rubinstein, whose ballet troupe staged it in 1928, with choreography by Nijinska. It's two thematic elements are linked by the continuing percussion rhythm that gives the work it's hypnotic fascination.

Way ahead of his time, misunderstood, and a rebel. It is difficult to believe, as we hail Beethoven's achievements, that the great German composer had only been dead three years when Berlioz wrote the erotic Symphonie Fantastique. It was not progress, it was a quantum leap forward for music. Yet he was often shunned, the size and scope of such operas as The Trojans totally alien to those who were still trying to come to terms with the comparative conservatism of Beethoven's Fidelio. Just imagine Brahms was not yet born! This disc is the ideal way to appreciate just how great and significant was his music. From the boisterous Roman Carnival Overture, to the chilling March to the Scaffold, here is the very best of Berlioz. It is presented in outstanding performances, many from the partial cycle of Berlioz made for Naxos by the virtuoso orchestra from San Diego. And it even contains a novelty to titillate those who think they know a lot about Berlioz, with the Rêverie et Caprice, a work of stunning beauty for violin and orchestra.

Take a large spoonful of Bolero, add a small amount of Pavane, simmer in the heat of Feria, then mix with a little Blues and you have the perfect Ravel. It's the recipe for success in the 'Best of' market, particularly when you have Naxos's stunning performances. What did the critics say when the discs, from which this compilation is taken, were first issued. "The whole performance, throbbing with life, makes you listen afresh", was the Gramophone's view of Thiollier's performance of the Piano Concerto. "Superbly recorded", was the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs accolade for Ma m_re l'oye, while Fanfare adds the Rapsodie Espagnole is "well conceived, executed and recorded".