24 Ways upon the Bells

A nos amours

Wedding Music - HANDEL, G.F. / MOZART, W.A. / BACH, J.S. / V

Spohr - Nielsen - Debussy: Clarinet Concertos & Rhapsody

Schumann: Frauenliebe und -leben

Sometimes, dreams come true. For Francesco Tristano, the dream was twofold: first a desire to project his art in the future by devoting himself to one of the most incontestably timeless figures in the history of music, Johann Sebastian Bach. This profound desire fuelled the creation of intothefuture, Francesco Tristano's very personal line of recordings, where sounds morph into an abstract and subtly poetic photographic imagery, which is found in the booklets. This first of these recordings, dedicated to the six Partitas (BWV 825 to BWV 830) is a perfect illustration of this concept. For this pianist from Luxembourg, this collection constituted the starting point of his patient exploration of Bach's work. In fact, it also represents the composer's supreme achievement in the genre of the keyboard dance suite. Also known as the "German suites", to differentiate them from the two collections of "English" (BWV 806 to BWV 811) and "French" (BWV 812 to BWV 817) suites, the 6 Partitas belong to the rare compositions that Bach had published during his lifetime, as the first part of the Clavier-ubung - from 1726 to 1730, then all six in 1731. Composed separately, probably one after the other, these six suites, an infinite kaleidoscope of moods, were to embody his plural and abundant art, in a supreme synthesis of the tastes of the time. With their lively tempos (Partita III, Fantasia; Partita I, Allemande; Partita V, Tempo di Minuetto; Partita VI, Corrente), their very lively phrasing (Partita I, Gigue; Partita II, Capriccio; Partita VI, Toccata; Partita II, Courante), the six Partitas according to Francesco Tristano, a musician with an inexhaustible vivacity of mind, celebrate life everywhere. This impression of a whirlwind, this sense of movement are irresistible! Once again, Francesco Tristano is here in a class of his own. 24 SEPTEMBRE 2024

Paul Huang and Helen Huang have been exploring the repertoire for violin and piano for now a decade. As a way of celebrating their fruitful and enriching collaboration, they have devised this album as an ingenious game of mirroring. The title of this second album for na�ve is not accidental, as the two musicians offer highly diverse perspectives. This new recording focuses first on two sonatas composed by Francis Poulenc (1942-1943) and Sergei Prokofiev (1938-1946) during the second world war of the 20th century, respectively at the opening and closing of this album. Between these two pieces, Spiegel i'm Spiegel by Arvo Part (1978), a page with ethereal lines, a moment of introspection and calm that becomes a space for contemplation and reflection necessary in this otherwise dense and angular programme.

In December 2017, in Fribourg, mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti met lutenist Vincent Fluckiger and multi-instrumentalist, engineer and producer Fred Chappuis. Under the guidance of director Wouter Van Looy, they created a fascinating show for performances at the Lucerne Theatre the following spring, which mixed the melancholic songs of John Dowland (1563-1626) with the sounds of electronic music. All three originally came from rock/metal/punk, and Wouter Van Looy would rekindle in each of them a profound desire to explore new horizons. Following the success of the Lucerne evenings, the mezzo-soprano engaged her two colleagues, now friends, a few months later in the pursuit of a common adventure, which was sealed in the idea of Melankh�lia: Dowland's captivating songs would now be joined by well-known pop songs rearranged in the same spirit, where the archlute or the modern electric guitar coexist with a Moog, percussion or a mellotron, enveloping the voice. Two eras speak to each other, and finally merge into each other. Several themes structure this intensely lyrical journey, carried by the lascivious voice of Marina Viotti: love and it's illusions, evoked in One by U2 as well as in Fairwell, Too Fair by Dowland, hopes (Die Not Before Thy Day by Dowland or Joga by Bjork) as well as death (Born to Die by Lana Del Rey preceded by In Darkness Let Me Dwell by Dowland) or redemption (Flow My Tears by Dowland). By infusing the spirit of her youth, these early years when she wrote texts and songs for her metal band, in her present, which sees her defending the most beautiful roles of the great lyric repertoire, Marina Viotti reveals a very intimate part of herself. More than a journey across the genres and over the centuries, "In Darkness Through the Light" is in fact the story of a life journey, a fight for life and against darkness. In the spring of 2019, the mezzo-soprano was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, of which she recovered completely. The shadows gone, Marina Viotti was able to confide her secret, with total openness. It is therefore this experience that informs "In Darkness Through the Light", a project that accompanied her healing process, and which became the album of her liberation.

Since it's inception in 2001, the Vivaldi Edition has explored the fantastic diversity of the work of the Prete Rosso. Presented by Giulio Prandi's Coro e Orchestra Ghislieri, this seventy-second volume is once again dedicated to sacred music. Two exceptional works, the Dixit Dominus, RV 807 and the Magnificat, RV 611, here frame rare motets such as Sanctorum meritis, RV 620 and Vos invito, barbarae faces, RV 811. Preserved at the Saxon State Library, the Dixit Dominus belonged to a lot ordered from a Venetian publisher in the mid-1750s by the Saxon court which, threatened by the Prussian army, had been forced to flee Dresden for Warsaw. Illustrating the highly pictorial text of Dixit Dominus, Vivaldi favours a lively and sparkling aesthetic, full of figurations. For example, pairs of repeated sixteenth notes depict the gentle lapping of a stream (De torrente in via bibet) while the impressive final fugue embodies the majesty of Christian communion. Also forged in an ingenious and hushed counterpoint, the second motet of this programme, Confitebor tibi, Domine, presents three solo voices, something rare for Vivaldi. Hymn from the liturgy of the martyrs, Sanctorum meritis, RV 620 then introduces Vos invito, barbarae faces, whose text enjoins the believer to fight against the forces of evil. This program finally offers the final version of the Magnificat in G minor (RV 611) in which the Red Priest specifically dedicated to a few singers of the Ospedale della Pieta certain sections, radically transformed since the first version of the 1710s. This results in little less ensemble parts, and more arias for the soloists, almost a foretaste of Classicism. Faithful to his quest for clarity and joy that had been highlighted by moving recordings devoted to Jommelli and Rossini, Giulio Prandi, for this first collaboration with the na�ve label, glorifies the luminous, aristocratic sobriety of Vivaldi. Unexpected and invigorating. 25 July 2024

The pianist Zlata Chochieva is well known for creating unexpected associations. In "Chiaroscuro", her first album for naive (V7542, 2022), she had combined the worlds of Scriabin and Mozart, in whom she hears not only the same desire for clarity and weightlessness but also a similar poetic sense of rhetoric. Her next album ("i'm Freien", V7959, 2023), a homage to nature, revealed alongside Ravel's Miroirs and Schumann's Waldszenen a short cycle, so little known and graceful (Petite Histoire), by Felix Draeseke! No wonder she is now offering us, for her first album with orchestra, one of the most obscure works of Russian Romanticism, the Piano Concerto by Rimsky-Korsakov. Written in 1883 in memory of Franz Liszt, whose two opuses in the genre strongly influenced the author of Scheherazade, this Concerto, with it's monothematic structure, built on a Russian folk theme, had greatly impressed Balakirev, who was surprised to hear such an idiomatically written soloist part, from a composer who was not a pianist himself. At the age of fourteen, Zlata Chochieva had played the work under the direction of Mikhail Pletnev, then head of the Russian National Orchestra. This Concerto remains for her a "miracle of taste, poetry and inspiration". Her intelligent and limpid playing is ideally suited to the very delicate lyricism that Rimsky-Korsakov deploys throughout this astonishing score full of numerous and subtle contrasts. At the heart of this recording, where Zlata Chochieva is joined by the musicians of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the German conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens, surges the merciless ardor of Sergei Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto. In a departure from the stormy way in which this formidable score (for the fingers) is generally approached by pianists, Zlata Chochieva prefers a certain sense of phantasmagoria, rightly recalling that Prokofiev, as a spiritual disciple of Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, enjoyed stories, old Russian fairy tales and legends. After this, we have a total change of atmosphere with the Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra by Alexander Tsfasman which concludes the album. An eminent disciple of Felix Blumenfeld, an incredibly talented pianist, to whom Shostakovich intended piano part of one of his film scores, Tsfasman introduced American jazz to the Soviet Union, and formed the first orchestra dedicated to the genre. In Russia, he premiered Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, a composer for whom he had the deepest admiration. A brilliantly written, comforting and sincere score, his Jazz Suite sometimes evokes the American composer but above all Hollywood and Soviet film scores. Not without a most contagious and mischievous pleasure, Zlata Chochieva and Karl-Heinz Steffens revel in it's ingenuous charms (Snowflakes). 17 July 2024

Good things always come in threes. There was once the Concerto in Italian style, BWV 971, reconfigured according to the by then modern disposition advocated in Italy at the beginning of the 18th century (anthology "Concerti italiani", 2004, OP30301). More recently, the Goldberg Variations, reimagined for a small string ensemble, crowned a fabulous apotheosis in the land of the variation ("Variations on Variations", OP30575). Here are now three completely original orchestral suites by Bach, a new fool's game organised by a tongue in the cheek Rinaldo Alessandrini, once again surrounded by his dear friends from the Concerto Italiano.

Once again, cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca renews artistic perspectives in relation to his instrument. With "Legacy" (V7259) released in early 2023, he questioned the notion of heritage in music, through a mirroring between the concerti by Haydn and the works of his master Porpora, not forgetting to highlight fruitful interactions with Mozart. "Wonderful World", the fruit of a collaboration with Yann Arthus-Bertrand, awakened our consciences to environmental issues (V7362, 2021).

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