Innovative and enthralling mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter already has a successful discography, including her critically acclaimed album with Brad Mehldau Love Songs, and her Grammy award-winning Douce France. For this release, Anne has joined with Brooklyn Rider, a trailblazing and frequently favorited string quartet. The project which ensued presents music from iconic artists in both the classical and pop music worlds. Brooklyn Rider is violinists Colin Jacobsen and Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Eric Jacobsen. Based in New York City, the ensemble is known for playing contemporary and unusual repertoire. The group founded the Stillwater Music Festival in 2006. New works written just for Anne Sofie and Brooklyn Rider come from composers Nico Muhly, Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw. Works from Brooklyn Rider’s ‘Almanac’ project are also included, which The Boston Globe called “an all-over-the-map stylistic tour and a treatise on present-day quartet writing.”

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REVIEW:

What is so remarkable about Anne Sofie von Otter is her ability to assimilate so many different styles and make them her own. Nowhere on this album is there a sense of a classically schooled singer who tries to incorporate music from another world in her traditional way of singing. She adjusts her way of singing to the material in question—and it sounds natural.

– MusicWeb International

A luminous, easily recognizable instrument, and a symbol of Italy's learned and popular musical tradition, the mandolin has been the subject of several major compositions throughout the history of music. First of all, the famous concertos by Vivaldi: two of them appear here on this intensely romantic album (‘Come une volta’) that Julien Martineau - one of today’s greatest figureheads of the instrument - has recorded for Naïve. We also finally get to hear, thanks to the world premiere recording by Julien Martineau, the legendary, virtuosic and poetic second concerto (of which the manuscript was lost) by Raffaele Calace (1863-1934), who was often described as "the Paganini of the mandolin". The instrument is in fact so close, in many ways, to the violin. The Caudioso concerto completes an album which, steeped in authenticity and musical excellence, honors and lends prestige not only to the art of mandolin, but also to Italian and musical culture as a whole.

SR9 Trio promotes a creative vision of current Western percussion. Attached to the classical musical heritage, they are actively involved with careful rereading and transcriptions for 3 marimbas of emblematic scores. Since its creation in 2010 at the CNSMD of Lyon, the SR9 Trio performs in France and worldwide, notably in the United States, Canada, Germay, England, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Paul Changarnier, Nicolas Cousin, and Alexandre Esperet are three young and curious musicians and they definitely express themselves in a wide range of performances. They like to collaborate with various artists to explore other artistic fields, including dance and theater, and create new projects where all disciplines merge into one creative expression. This programme follows their previous release “Bach at the Marimba,” and is conceived upon the theme of dance throughout music history, from Rameau to De Falla.

FRANCK Violin Sonata. DEBUSSY Cello Sonata. POULENC Cello Sonata • Anne Gastinel (vc); Claire Désert (pn) • NAÏVE V5259 (61: 20)


This is an excellent version of Poulenc’s Cello Sonata. It has a persuasive sense of direction and a well-judged series of tempo decisions. It’s also warmly played, and ensemble between Anne Gastinel and Claire Désert is watertight. If your classic recording of choice is that of Pierre Fournier with Jacques Février—and I suppose that 1971 LP disc looms large in the discography—then you should know that the newcomers have their own views about things, and they ensure a convincing milieu for the work. Maybe the older pair breathed more naturally at certain points in the first movement—one feels their paragraphal phrasing is the more natural—but that doesn’t limit admiration for Gastinel and Désert, who take a more incisive tempo for the slow movement and sustain it well. It’s a passionate point of view, but then it is a passionate movement and one of the most outspoken in all of Poulenc’s music. Witty badinage restores things in the Ballabile third movement, and while Fournier emphasizes some of the more spectral moments in the finale with greater impact and immediacy, the more up-to-date and natural dynamic range of this Naïve recording proves laudable. This then is a compelling and first-class account of the sonata.


The Debussy sonata reprises the virtues of the Poulenc, though it does so in a way that signals the players’ freedom from convention. They don’t play in as arresting a manner as those pioneering French musicians Maurice Maréchal and Robert Casadesus, who, in their 1930 recording, performed with unselfconscious directness. But they do abjure some of the more outré gestures that have accreted to, say, the Sérénade’s pizzicatos, which is well and good in my book. They play with assurance throughout, though my own preferences lie with the classic older statement and also with the more phrasally suggestive playing of Tortelier and Gerald Moore in their 1948 disc, now in a huge Paul Tortelier EMI retrospective box.


The last work is the transcription of the Franck Violin Sonata made by Jules Delsart, with the approval of the composer, in 1888. This has been an increasingly popular option for cellists, and Gastinel and Désert play with a canny appreciation of when to press on and when to fine-down tone. Gastinel’s vibrato speed is well judged, and the pianist, who shoulders most of the truly taxing demands, acquits herself estimably.


This fine recital has been warmly recorded, is well balanced and reflects well on all concerned.


FANFARE: Jonathan Woolf

‘Rencontre' is the first recital album of soprano Raquel Camarinha and pianist Yoan Héreau, new signings on Naïve. It crystallizes several years of passionate live music-making for the duo. From Debussy to Poulenc, via Ravel and the all-too rare Delage, we are invited on a journey akin to a game of mirrors between composers, music, poems, characters and performers, that is in turn amorous, dreamlike, mysterious and wonderfully evocative. The Portuguese soprano Raquel Camarinha was born in Braga in 1986. She began her vocal studies in 2000, completed the Secondary Singing Course in 2004, and in 2009 the Undergraduate Course in Music, at the University of Aveiro. In 2011 she took her master’s degree at the Paris Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique et Danse, in the class of Chantal Mathias. Winner of several national and international awards, in 2011 she won first prize at the Luísa Todi National Singing Competition in Portugal, as well as the Best Female Performer Award at the Armel Opera Competition in Hungary.

A few months ago, Avishai Cohen was releasing his symphonic album “Two Roses”, a “once in a lifetime project", he said. After a successful release and more than a hundred reviews around the world – the Israeli composer, singer, and bass player returns to jazz with a dazzling new trio: Elchin Shirinov, still on the piano and, on drums, the arrival of the young and incredibly talented Roni Kaspi, who joined the band during the 2021 summer tour. This new album “Shifting Sands”, recorded in August 2021, re-engages with this very special alchemy that Cohen’s music provides: fresh and expansive melodic lines, diverse and sophisticated rhythms and a musical elegance that only he can achieve.

REVIEW:

Consistency and excellence are two of the most fundamental requisites for achieving an optimal career in music. The Israeli bassist and composer Avishai Cohen has maintained those standards for many years, and his new trio emerges with a powerful offering that should reinforce his status as a jazz-based titan. This formation enlists familiar, longtime collaborator Elchin Shirinov on piano with a relative newcomer and recent Berklee graduate, 21-year old drummer Roni Kaspi. The results of their initial collaboration are stirring from start to finish.

Cohen's confidence in his team and his material is apparent from how often he remains in the background. On the opening "Intertwined," Shirinov sets the tone and gets the first solo while Kaspi snaps across the rims and cymbal heads in lead-type notation. Cohen does not come to the fore until two songs later, on the relaxed "Dvash," the first of three solo-type interludes, then demonstrates his proficiency on the bow during "Chacha Rom." "Hitragut" is a sweet summer song that lands like a Central Park serenade. Many pieces follow a basic structure that begins with one or two sharply repeated patterns, rolls into transitional overlaps, then returns along the opening framework in a formula that fits the album's title theme perfectly.

One of the most impressive things about this this exceptional record is how much masterful mileage each member gets from a relatively small number of notes or beats. Top rank creativity, aptitude, and technique are some other things that make for musical success. There is an abundance of all that and more to be found in this new trio.

-- AllAboutJazz.com (Phillip Woolever)

Iroko launches Avishai Cohen’s longtime dream “to do a Latin project with his favorite Latin musician in New York”. Israel based bassist - singer and master conguero-vocalist Abraham Rodriguez Jr., brim with tunefulness, grooves, warmth, indelible melodies and the bonds of brotherhood to summon Yoruba gods. In Yoruba lore, Iroko is a complicated symbol—a troll inhabiting the top branches of a tree called “the throne of god,” guarded against lest he come to earth, be seen and drive men mad.

But Iroko, the French naïve label’s unique release by singer-bassist Avishai Cohen and conguero-vocalist Abraham Rodriguez Jr., brims with tunefulness, grooves and warmth. It has deep roots in esoteric religion and popular song, and comes naturally from these 30-year cross-cultural collaborators who ward off trouble, united in musical spirit. The album is the 20th for prodigious Israel-based composer-performer Cohen, but just the third project out-front for Rodriguez, a self-described Nuyorican, Santeria-adept and doowop-batarumba king, though he’s added his secret sauce for decades to the best Latin New York recordings. It’s as soulful as a streetcorner serenade in Spanish Harlem.

Appeals to the Yoruba orishas flow among reappraising versions of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World,” the 1960 Academy Award-winner “Theme to Exodus,” and Sinatra-associated “Fly Me To the Moon.” Everything’s grounded in the propulsive clavé rhythm that underlies virtually all Afro-Caribbean-derived music (jazz included), as Rodriguez’s hand-drumming locks in syncopation with Cohen’s irresistible bass patterns, and their voices blend like those of true friends. Iroko launches Cohen’s longtime dream “to do a Latin project with my favorite Latin musicians in New York. It starts with this concept record, just me and Abi,” he says, “followed by the premiere in March in Paris of our band [with drummer Hernacio “El Negro” Hernandez, trumpeter Diego Urcola, saxophonist Yosvany Terry, and Spanish singer Virginia Garcia Alves], then a week at the Blue Note in New York, and dates at the summer’s festivals.” While Cohen, who earned his initial acclaim in the piano trios of Chick Corea and Danilo Perez, has previously convened world-spanning ensembles such as the International Vamp Band, and Abi (as he’s called, not by Avishai alone) has led the bands Cachimba Inolvidable and Okonkolo, Iroko is unprecedented as a synthesis of influences the duo reveres. They first met in 1993, working with pianist Ray Santiago’s band out of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “It was a collaboration of Cuban and Puerto Rican music, with a little jazz,” Abi says. “A Nuyorican thing.” Avishai recalls, “As I got to where they were rehearsing, I heard the piano and conga doing some montuno [a repeating ostinato figure], slipped the cover off my bass and just joined in. We didn’t know each other yet, but the rest is a history of many gigs together.”

Avishai had studied jazz at the New School and Mannes School of Music, choosing as a teacher Andy Gonzalez, the busiest bass player on the Latin scene. Abi, a Santeria priest validated in his mixture of the sacred and secular by his godfather, the bata great Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, knew bassist Gonzalez and his trumpet/conguero brother Jerry Gonzalez, from the drum circles he sat in with while growing up. They were principals of Grupo Folklórico y Experimental Nuevayorquino, in which Abi played, and the Fort Apache Band, best known for Latin-izing the compositions of Thelonious Monk.

Iroko is dedicated to the Gonzalez brothers, now both deceased, as a gesture to the salsa-meets-jazz movement that counts Machito and Dizzy Gillespie, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri among its stars. “What attracted me at first to Abi and Ray Santiago’s music was its New York edge, Latin music swinging a little differently, which Abi embodies as a melting-pot musician. He’s created a language for himself out of r&b, blues, doowop, jazz, Motown—a world of his own that I wanted to play bass in. From beginning to end, just conga, bass and vocals, and profoundly beautiful songs we could take apart and make our own. Now when I listen to the groove of it, I want to dance. The essence is there.” “As Mongo Santamaria said, ‘Drum and chant,’” Abi adds. “That’s what we have here. It’s universal, and for everyone, young and old. Even those who are bitter, when they hear these songs, will be touched and smile. Those who are angry? We’ll kill them with kindness.”

On Iroko, Avishai Cohen and Abraham Rodriguez Jr. summon Yoruba gods, indelible melodies and the bonds of brotherhood as a stand against the insanity that threatens us if we forget that our ultimate strength comes from creating beauty together.

From country music to rhythm and blues, Robin McKelle has made an entire career exploring the rich vastness of American music. With Impressions of Ella, McKelle returns to her traditional jazz roots and finds herself right at home. McKelle wisely eschews Ella’s scatting and note-bending style in favor of thoughtful arrangements and keen musicianship that revivify these timeless standards.

“For me, “Impressions of Ella” feels like a homecoming of sorts. Like a family reunion after years of separation. A reconnection with the music that fueled my most formative musical years and it was Ella Fitzgerald that left quite an impression. I admired the effortless way she made herself a part of the band, even though she was the star. Her powerful voice and explosive scat to the most delicate tones had me hooked. I wanted to celebrate her and the style of her sound but in doing so, keeping my own individuality.

To help bring her concept to life, McKelle enlists a brand new trio of venerated jazz players: Kenny Washington on drums, bassist Peter Washington, and NEA Jazz Master Kenny Barron on piano. “I wasn’t intimidated to make music with them, but [their] résumés were like, ‘Wow!’ [Am I] going to be good enough? Are we going to connect? The exciting thing was having the opportunity to sing over them as a trio; that was such a huge joy.” The bond between a vocalist and an accompanist is perhaps one of music’s most profound and extraordinary unions.

With Impressions of Ella, she doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel or limit her potential for creative expression. While it lauds our “First Lady of Song,” the album also marks an inevitable coming of age for McKelle’s career in jazz, as the fruits of her hard work and years of training finally ripen and bear fruit.

Alma opens a whole new door for pianist Yaron Herman. After ten albums, here he is, launching himself into the void and, for the first time, offering us an entirely improvised body of work, at once a staggering snapshot of the present and a rich mirror of his past. Let us recall that a knee injury forced Herman to end a promising basketball career. From the age of sixteen, he then devoted himself to music. Under the guidance of Opher Brayer, his training encouraged him to adopt a holistic vision in which the study of music is part of a whole that includes philosophy, psychology, and mathematics. For him, the piano is thus at the center of a more global reflection; it’s a travel companion to help decipher the mysteries of the world. This creative, prolific, and unconventional path is the framework for a fascinating and generous global reflection in his recently published book entitled Le Déclic Créatif.

We sometimes forget that at the dawn of music, up until the end of the 16th century, improvisation was at the heart of the practice. Later, composers from Bach to Chopin, from Beethoven to Messiaen, all created melodies and invented harmonies on the spot, which sometimes became the matrix of their masterpieces. This is the path that Herman followed when he walked through the studio door to record Alma. Without any planned script, he pushed himself to the edge of a form of letting go, listening to what the music had to say and opening doors to spaces still unknown to him.

French iconic pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon makes his return to the jazz trio sound, with an album dedicated to British pop. From the Beatles to Radiohead, Queen to the Rolling Stones, Baptiste Trotignon demonstrates his talents for arrangements by transforming the greatest melodies from a legendary repertoire; supported by Matt Penman on double bass and Greg Hutchinson on drums.

“BREXIT MUSIC is not a political album. But it holds in its title—which came to me long after the idea of the repertoire, an ultimately quite British taste for derision: in the end, art shall survive all social fads. I wanted a fresh, playful sound, groove, and a bit of humor. Both playful and well executed. The intense presence of Matt and Greg is a big part of it. Covering a popular song is common practice for jazz musicians, and like many others before me, I have often done it. Still, the idea of an entire album revolving exclusively around British pop music was not self-evident: it was a challenge to remain lively and "fun" without the lyrics. So I was left with the often simplistic material of these songs, even if most of them have been an exciting and joyful part of my teenage years.

And then, little by little, by digging mainly into the incredibly creative era of the 70s, I started to have fun, sometimes arranging the melodies with the language I am most familiar with and sometimes playing them as they are. The simple sound of the piano/double bass/drums acoustic jazz trio created the surprise. Jazz and pop musicians are often considered rivals. And yet, in both worlds, you can hear the same sublime violence and thirst for freedom. Jazz was a popular and revolutionary music long before the arrival of rock's exuberance. Its animality (which I love!) contrasted with jazz and its complex harmonies and rhythms. Why not try to combine the two? While keeping in mind that this form of loving and poetic resistance is common to ALL genres.” (Baptiste Trotignon, May 2023)

Danger is what drives LAAKE. After tackling an electronic symphony with "O", first album released in 2020 on Mercury and two EPs released in 2015 and 2017, french pianist and producer LAAKE returns with "VOLT", a vast and solar opus against the current tides of the electronic music scene. The piano loops, spearhead of the musician, collide with the percussions and drums - great novelties of this album - in a progressive and mastered deluge. The album's energy easily navigates through electronic and classical dimensions, flirting with organ sounds, powerful basses and polyphonic voices, all witnesses of the urgency arising from each track.

Recorded with 10 musicians from the classical and jazz worlds between Paris and Brussels, the 10 tracks that make up the album succeed one another but do not sound alike… Carried by the irresistible need for the musicians to surprise us. Yet "VOLT", LAAKE's second studio album, was initially imagined as a piano solo record, a collection of hundreds of snippets of melodies recorded and carefully preserved over the last ten years by LAAKE. History decided otherwise: "During the recording of the first piece of the album, barefoot, I suffered an electrocution, or rather an electrification, the first one being fatal, by touching with my arm a luminous sconce of doubtful confection. Expelled backwards by the shock, persuaded to live my last moments, I noticed several minutes later the multiple burns appearing on my body, bewildered. A visit to the hospital followed and a psychological trauma that would last more than a year, unable to touch a switch or screw in a light bulb. The current had gone through me but I was still there. A cure? "LAAKE" means "medicine" in Finnish. A necessity rather, that of reinventing oneself, of metamorphosing in order to be better reborn.

“Which album is that song on?” is a question I often get asked after a concert at signings. Since our set lists invariably include a mixture of old and new repertoire, the answer is sometimes, “it’s not on any album.” This album is therefore a collection of those songs. It’s a response to all those people who have said over the years, somewhat disappointed, “you haven’t recorded If You Go Away?” and so on. This is also the first time I’ve recorded a song twice on the same album. If You Go Away entered my repertoire in 2018 when Jim wrote an orchestral arrangement for a concert in Paris. I was also singing Jacques Brel’s original, Ne me quitte pas, from time to time. But whatever the language, someone would ask why I hadn’t sung it in the other. Some singers have responded by interpolating both languages into the same version. Since both sets of lyrics are beautiful on their own terms and are equally deserving of inclusion, I chose to record them both. So, whilst not exactly a requests album, Summer Me, Winter Me is a response to that informal and unscientific sounding, a representative selection of some of these “requests”. With love, SK.

Recorded live in concert, Paavo Järvi created and conducted this thrilling programme of orchestral arrangements of chamber music works. The result is a world-class encounter between some of the most important names in music history. Works by Brahms, Shoenberg, Bach, and Webern are included. Currently in his third season as Music Director of Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi and the orchestra have just returned from a very successful tour to China and. Previous tours have taken them to major European Festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany and the Robeco Summer series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Click here to view the Vinyl version.

 

Susheela Raman's voice, whether solo or in unearthly harmonies, performs it's unique magic drawing the musical world together. With it's bold meddling with tune and tempo, this fresh set of songs threatens not to work but achieves a compelling integrity. Susheela Raman's Ghost Gamelan is a rich new landscape unlike any of her previous work and quite unlike anything else. Born in London to South Indian parents, singer Susheela Raman, alongside producer/guitarist Sam Mills, has released a chain of adventurous albums and is known as an intense, captivating live performer. Spirited encounters with musicians from a wide range of backgrounds has been a hallmark of her work. Now a new ambitious collaboration with Indonesian musicians is bearing fruit. Raman has delivered this extraordinary album, the body of which was recorded in Solo, Indonesia in 2016. The album is a collaboration with Javanese contemporary gamelan composer Gondrong Guanarto and his team of virtuoso gamelan players. Gamelan, for non-initiates, is the music of Bali and Java, played mostly on tuned gongs, which has long inspired smart western music makers from Debussy, Messaien, Philip Glass and Steve Reich to Sonic Youth. Traces of it's shimmering, loopy DNA are over everything from modal jazz to electronic dance music.

This album marks the return of a Master. Salif Keita is devoted to the cause of Albinos in Africa but after 5 years, he is back with his enchanting voice and his unique sense of groove, surrounded by an outstanding band (Alune Wade, Paco Sery, Herv� Samb...) and first-class featured guests: Ang�lique Kidjo, MHD, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Yemi Alade). This is a major musical and cultural event! Salif Keita is an afro-pop singer-songwriter from Mali. He is notable not only due to his reputation as the "Golden Voice of Africa," but also for his albinism. He was born a traditional prince in the village of Djoliba. He moved to Paris in 1984, where his music reached a world-wide audience.

2009 two CD release from the French singer/songwriter, often compared to Serge Gainsbourg. Including guest appearances from Jeanne Cherhal and Valeri Donzelli. Naive.

A posthumous record? "Nothing to declare!" as Rachid would have said, leaning on the bar counter, with messy hair, bright eyes, and a raspy voice. He's there, you can't miss him. He may be laid to rest in Algeria, but he hasn't left us. He knew that those who are allegedly missing are well and alive: "Do you really know the others?" the master of rock-Cha�bi once asked, quoting the greats Johnny Cash, Oum Kalthoum, and Andy Warhol in a prophetic song titled Andy Walhoo. He wrote this arabic-punk-electro piece with guitars, balafon, and mouth harp before succumbing to a heart attack on September 12, 2018. With boundless energy, Taha wrote eleven songs together with Toma Feterman for his eleventh solo album, diving deep into his roots as usual. First, Algerian Cha�bi, so subtle, yet so complex. Then rock, which took the world by storm during the postwar period, and punk, it's offshoot, in the style of The Clash. Finally, electronica, the musical revolution of the late twentieth century, as hypnotic as the Gnawas guembris or Sufi trance sounds.

Born in Bordeaux in 1945, Christian Morin’s varied career and talents have taken him down the paths of illustrator, poster artist, cartoonist, renowned TV presenter and most importantly here, a leading clarinet player. He’s played with great French and American musicians including Henri Salvador, Buddy Tate, Milt Buckner, Jo Jones, Buck Clayton, T. Bone Walker, among others. His newest album, Blue Indigo, finds him in the company of French compatriots for an album full of fine American standards.

Harrison Kennedy's voice, banjo, spoons and guitar, Jean-Jacques Milteau's imaginative harmonica and Vincent Segal's lyrical cello converse and play as the members of this inspired trio pay homage to their roots without sacrificing to nostalgia, inventing no less than the future of the blue note in the process. Kennedy owes forbearers who traveled the Underground Railroad all the way to Ontario, fleeing the Southern plantations where they were enslaved. Harrison has kept from this aching heritage a deep respect for the Mississippi and Tennessee roots he nurtures to this day in a truly original and personal fashion. The proud holder of a 2016 Juno Award and recipient of the 2015 Blues Prize granted by Académie, Charles Cros got his start at the height of the soul era. After making a noted debut on the prestigious Motown imprint joined the stellar group Chairmen of the Board, traveling across the world and sharing the stage with the likes of Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, and Tom Jones, among others. Eclecticism remains to this day the dominant trait of an artist who has always combined tradition and innovation. Jean-Jacques Milteau needs no introduction. This French harmonica wizard is a respected specialist of the blue note whose fruitful work with Eric Bibb around the repertoire of old-time songster Lead Belly has recently been acclaimed. Milteau, the winner of two Victoires de la Musique has worked, in the studio and on stage, with the likes of B.B. King, Little Milton, Mighty Mo Rodgers and Sam McClain. As for Vincent Segal, winner of an impressive number of Victoires de la Musique and with twenty years on the road with Cyril Atef and the duo Bumcello under his belt, his cello has graced an impressive number of projects in a wide variety of musical styles.

Dimitry Sinkovsky is a dazzlingly multi-talented artist -a brilliant violinist, countertenor, conductor, and founder in 2011 of the ensemble La Voce Strumentale. In Virtuosissimo, his fifth venture with Na�ve, he has teamed up again with the ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro, his partners in numerous recordings and concerts, to cast more light on Pisendel, a celebrated violinist and composer who led the prestigious Dresden Court Orchestra, and a Vivaldi devotee who copied out several of the Venetian master's concertos for performance in Dresden. Virtuosissimois a photography of an influential moment in music history. With this new album, Dmitry Sinkovsky goes beyond Vivaldi and his influences: as well as Pisendel, he plays works by Locatelli, Tartini, Leclair and Telemann, all of whom enriched the early 18th-century violin repertoire with opulent, highly personal works focusing on soloistic bravura. A century later, Paganini was to draw on this baroque heritage. All the concertos here have inspired high-wire performances to Dmitry Sinkovsky: fiery exchanges with the orchestra, cunningly crafted cadences, vertiginous harmonics, startlingly unexpected bowing, sharp-edged attacks, daunting double-stopping... Sinkovsky seems to completely embody these five concertos, as if propelled by an inextinguishable flame: the electrifying result is truly 'virtuosissimo'.

Bach: Praeludien & Fugen

Following a breathtaking Vivaldi album, Russian violinist and countertenor Dmitry Sinkovsky is turning to Bach music. Once again, he combines his unrivalled virtuosity in both arts to create an outstanding recording in which 3 famous violin concertos are paired with vocal hits by Bach: "Erbarme Dich", "Es ist vollbracht" and "Agnus Dei" from B minor mass. Russian virtuoso violinist Dmitry Sinkovsky has been a prizewinner in multiple international competitions, including the Bach Competition, Musica Antiqua Competition, and Romanus Weichlein. In 2011 he founded the La Voca Strumentale ensemble in Moscow, and was a conductor of Il Complesso Barocco from 2012 to 2014. He currently serves as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory where he teaches both violin and viola.

Handel, Scarlatti, Corelli, Stradella, Muffat ... From 1650 to the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rome exercised an immense power in attracting composers from all over Europe and experienced an intense moment of musical activity, because of - or in spite of - the papal administration. It was a prosperous period with a melting pot of influences. The programme devised here by the Roman conductor, Rinaldo Alessandrini, offers a complete and personal vision of the time, passionate and secular, lyrical (made sublime by Sandrine Piau) and orchestral, romantic in every way. Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of the leading figures in the international early music scene. His predilection for the Italian repertory and his constant preoccupation with the expressive characteristics specific to the Italian style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are the decisive factors that orientate his musical approach and interpretative options, both as the head of Concerto Italiano, of which he is the founder and director, and as a soloist and guest conductor.

For several decades, as solo harpsichordist and director of his ensemble Concerto Italiano, Rinaldo Alessandrini has been exploring not just the Italian repertoire that he is so passionate about, but also the works of Bach –as in his benchmark recording of the Brandenburg Concertos in 2005. In this new recording, Ales-sandrini has mounted a challenge to all currently available recordings of those four Orchestral Suites that Bach called ‘Overtures’, after their imposing opening movements. We don’t know when these dance suites were composed, nor where they were first performed, but they were certainly played in Leipzig at the time Bach was directing its celebrated Collegium Musicum. Here Alessandrini has once again sifted all available sources, putting the composer’s entire output under the microscope to identify the most authentic details of style and orchestration. The result is a subtle balance between Bach’s intricate contrapuntal writing and the spontaneity of his dances, with their French and Italian influences. Together with these majestic, festive, radiant works by J.S. Bach, Concerto Italiano presents two Overtures in the same instrumental mold by Johann Bernhard and Johann Ludwig Bach –two composer cousins with whom Johann Sebastian enjoyed lifelong ties of mutual friendship and esteem. During his Leipzig years he had their Overtures copied out, so he could perform them with the Collegium Musicum. Here then is a welcome opportunity to hear these two superb orchestral pieces in the contemporary context of Bach’s own music.

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REVIEW:

Fans of these players won’t need much encouragement to purchase this, indeed, it should act as a reminder that Concerto Italiano and Rinaldo Alessandrini haven’t gained their reputation without good reason.

The sound quality is very immediate, especially for the winds, but not tiring. The notes, which run to nine pages on the music, are erudite, tracing in detail the history of the JSB works and their connection to the Leipzig Collegium Musicum. – MusicWeb International

Naïve is particularly proud to release the first recording from the orchestra recently founded by conductor Mathieu Herzog: Ensemble Appassionato. A favorite composer for the orchestra, who other than Mozart to bear witness to the recording debut from this ensemble? An ensemble born under the most auspicious circumstances, full of members from France’s major string quartets. The last three symphonies, a triptych as monumental as it is mysterious - we know almost nothing about the circumstances surrounding their composition - are probably the works that best symbolize the projects thus far of Mathieu Herzog and the Ensemble Appassionato. Their fresh vision, modern and chamber-like, plus a multitude of eclectic repertoire. A vision galvanized by the desire to share music with everyone. Listening to this recording nourished with as much passion and ambition as respect and humility, a more human and personified Mozart appears before us, more luminous than ever. Clear timbres, instrumental cohesion, balance, well-rounded characters, full-bodied tempi ... Mathieu Herzog demonstrates here a vision and an inherent know-how, placing him immediately in the pantheon of great conductors.

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REVIEW:

At root, these are modern-instrument performances that digest the historical discoveries of our time and offer a full-bodied chamber presentation. These three performances are, in their own ways, individual, minutely considered and thus, perhaps inevitably, not to every taste. The ensemble sound, however, is one of the glories of this set. As chamber players and therefore soloists in their own rights, the contribution of each player is palpable.

– Gramophone