Riopy TITLE: Riopy "This album has been my catharsis since the music started coming to me almost ten years ago. It's the world seen through my eyes, or rather, through my piano. It's evolved into a patchwork of emotions, experiences, beliefs - music that put an end to struggle. From On a cloud to Old soul, the pieces here came to life and brought hope when I thought nothing could save me. They each have their place in my development; they became my language. For me, a single chord can evoke a symphony of emotions. With solo piano, everything is exposed and we have to catch what passes through our fingers, which starts as raw emotion and translates as music in it's purest form. I feel that sharing these emotions through music helps us to reconnect; these aren't fingers double tapping to like or swiping away - these are fingers pulsing across the keys of a piano. The world changes and the music will always be tuned with the world; perhaps that is why I never seem to play a piece exactly the same way I did the last time. My insecurities and weaknesses find their way into my music, but also the landscapes and the people that inspire me. I hope the music on this album can reach the soul of listeners the very same way I feel it when I play"- Riopy

Itzhak Perlman, born in 1945, is the supreme violinist of his time. More than a decade after his first recording of the Mendelssohn and Bruch concertos (with Andr� Previn), Perlman returned to them with Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, bringing new insights and a still more acute sense for their Romantic contrasts and drama.

Ll Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova focus here on the little-known violin concertos of the second half of the eighteenth century. Bringing together the works of Franz Benda and Johann Gottlieb Graun (in a world premiere recording), pillars of the orchestra at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, as well as those of the Venetian virtuoso Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen and the iconoclastic Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (also in a world premiere recording), this album offers a bright panorama of the evolution of the genre, culminating in Mozart's achievements in the last quarter of the century, of which Il Pomo d'Oro and Zefira Valova offer us a glimpse with the famous Rondo in C K. 373.

In 1958 Poulenc composed La voix humaine, a one-act opera for soprano and orchestra, based on the monodrama of the same name, written for the Com�die-Fran�aise by his friend Jean Cocteau. In this staging of the end of an amorous relationship, we hear only the woman's side of a final telephone conversation with the man who has abandoned her. The orchestra in this innovative work is used not only to unify the composition, but also to reveal what the voice, laid bare by a moving parl�-chant� style, does not say. Fian�ailles pour rire and Chemins de l'amour, usually for voice and piano, but presented here in an orchestrated version by one of our finest conductors, Fr�d�ric Chaslin, completes this eloquent rendition of works of a bittersweetness that Poulenc transcends like no other.

Premiered just a few months before the French Revolution, Gr�try's Raoul Barbe-bleue is an op�ra comique with musical and dramatic implications so remarkable they even inspired Offenbach. Raoul Barbe-bleue depicts a cruel gentry from a political point of view, and even dares to mock through comic effects. The mysterious atmosphere that emerges from the drama (reminiscent of Weber's singspiel) stems from refined and elegant musical writing that cannot be compared to Gr�try's naive and simple early works. This premiere recording from Apart�, featuring a brilliant cast under the direction of Martin Wahlberg, reveals a considerable richness that will appeal to both the neophyte and the specialist.

Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord take you on a journey to discovery Duni, the father of op�ra-comique through two of his emblematic works: Les deux chasseurs et la laiti�re, and Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le, recorded here for the first time. Combining musical innovation and comic genius, these two "com�dies m�l�es d'ariettes" were at the origin of the metamorphosis of the light genre, which led directly to Mozart and the singspiel. Duni displayed a wealth of theatricality and an art of 'quiproquo' (misunderstanding), as in Alberti's aria "Ch�re Laurette" (Le peintre amoureux de son mod�le) or the superb final quartet "Ainsi le sort" from Les Deux chasseurs et la laiti�re. Martin W�hlberg and Orkester Nord, who had already highlighted Mozart's debt to Gr�try, continue their fascinating lyrical epic through the treasures of French opera, fully embracing it's revolutionary spirit and dramatic force.

The ensemble Aedes began it's musical journey with Poulenc, under the impetus of conductor Mathieu Romano. Here, at the head of Les Si�cles, Romano returns to the unclassifiable composer to record two of his major works. In the pious contemplation of the Litanies, here performed in the manuscript version, and the orchestral luxuriance of the Stabat Mater, spirituality is expressed through music that is lively, sensitive and even, at times, sensuous. Sculpting out every phrase and note, always at the service of the text, the ensemble and Mathieu Romano confirm their affinity with the composer's language. As an interlude Mathieu Romano has included a secular piece, O doulx regard, o parler gratieux, by the Renaissance composer Cl�ment Janequin. The boundaries between earthly love and mystical love are thus abolished in favor of pure emotion.

Maxim Emelyanychev's affinity with Mozart is well known, especially when it comes to piano works. In 2018, the conductor and keyboardist treated us to a recording that not only displayed his virtuosity and musicianship, but also revealed his remarkably close understanding of the composer's music. Today, the symphonies are the focus of his first long-term project with Il Pomo d'Oro, an ensemble he has been working with as it's conductor since 2013. As he points out, this project, aiming eventually to provide a complete set of the Mozart symphonies, is unlike anything he has recorded with the ensemble hitherto on period instruments. The approach here is original: each volume will feature an early symphony by Mozart, together with one of his great mature symphonies, which will enable the listener to perceive his many facets, revealed in the course of his development. Each volume will also include a bonus work, featuring a special guest. Inaugurating the series, Maxim Emelyanychev himself provides the hors d'�uvre with Concerto o.23 K.488, played on a fortepiano, before going on to conduct Mozart's Symphonies Nos.1 and 41.

In 1914, Stravinsky, more than ever, was taken up by his interest in pagan Russia and it's folk rituals. He worked on the composition of Les Noces, intended for the Ballets Russes, until 1923. These "choreographed scenes with music and voices" represent, in four tableaux, the Russian folk wedding ritual. Sober, stylised, razor-sharp, Stravinsky's music combines rhythmic brutality with an incantatory force, evoking both the timelessness and the inexorability of that ritual. There were several attempts at different instrumentations of the work. Here Mathieu Romano, the Ensemble Aedes and Les Si�cles present the world premiere recording of the full 1919 version (completed in 2007 by Theo Verbey), written for an ensemble of percussion instruments, two Hungarian cymbaloms, a harmonium, a pianola, and voices. The same unusual instrumentation, clear, incisive, precise, is used for Robin Melchior's arrangement of Ravel's Bol�ro: an unexpected and amazing, suave, and totally successful.

For "Jouissons de nos beaux ans!" the French tenor Cyrille Dubois returns to his favourite period in music: Baroque. Pursuing his mission as a trailblazer, he has teamed up with the Hungarian conductor Gy�rgy Vashegyi and the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to create a recital aimed at reviving little-known treasures of the eighteenth-century French operatic repertoire - several of the pieces are recorded here for the first time. Focussing on haute-contre roles - the haute-contre voice being the ancestor of the leggero tenor, or t�nor l�ger - the program includes some fine excerpts from operas by Rameau, together with some equally beautiful arias and choruses by composers such as Dauvergne, Mondonville, but also Iso, Royer, Berton, and others. Cyrille Dubois is magnificent as Tarsis (in Tarsis et Z�lie by Francoeur and Rebel), flamboyant as Ag�nor (in Les Caract�res de la Folie by Bernard de Bury) and extremely moving as C�phale (in L'Aurore et C�phale by Francoeur). This recital provides a full picture of the Baroque hero - sometimes tender and amorous, sometimes fiery or triumphant - who receives here one of the finest interpretations.

Arvo P�rt, one of the world's most performed living composers, will be eighty-seven in September. His music has been featured in many films, including Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre and Habemus Papam, Sorrentino's La grande bellezza, Paul Thomas Andersson's There Will Be Blood, Denis Arcand's Les Invasions barbares, and several films by Terrence Malick. A precursor of the Nordic minimalist school, he composes music that is modern, refined and deeply religious. He is the creator of the "tintinnabuli" compositional style. Morphing Chamber Orchestra, an innovative ensemble in the fields of Classical music and crossover, led by it's musical director Tomasz Wabnic, presents a selection of P�rt's most famous works with an all-star cast including Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak and Andreas Scholl. They perform the Stabat Mater, a masterpiece of sacred music, presented here in a new arrangement approved by the composer. The program also includes some beautiful songs - Vater Unser, Ein Wallfahrtslied and My Heart's in the Highlands - performed by acclaimed countertenor Andreas Scholl, as well as some fine instrumental pieces - Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Fratres and Summa. These highly committed musicians transport us to a dreamy Nordic world.

Well established in the field of historically informed performance, the Italian ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro has recently expanded: it now includes a choir, and this is it's first solo recording. Conducted by Giuseppe Maletto, the ensemble presents here Gesualdo's fascinating first book of Sacr� Cantiones. Less well known than his madrigals, the nineteen five-part motets that make up this work explore the theme of repentance through the Liturgy of Penance and the figure of the Virgin Mary. The painfully voluptuous chromaticism and the expressive intensity and refinement of the lines make this work one of the most singular of that period. Gesualdo's interpretation of the liturgical text is intensely dramatic and highly personal. Il Pomo d'Oro renders perfectly the mysterious beauty of this music.

Today, with the amount of recordings aimed at rediscovering the buried treasures of past centuries, it is difficult to ignore the work of Rebecca Clarke. Viola player Vinciane B�ranger, along with Dana Ciocarlie, H�l�ne Collerette and David Louwerse, have devoted a recording to the Clarke's works for viola. Both a composer and a performer, Clarke was one of the foremost professional women in England. Her music, at the crossroads of various currents, navigates at different moments through French music, modality, British folklore, harmonic boldness and exoticism. There is, however, no pastiche: Clarke creates her own honey from these trends in order to construct a quite atypical language that is resolutely modern. From her masterly Viola Sonata to the poetic Morpheus, and not forgetting the trio Dumka or the duet Chinese Puzzle, the performers are keen to paint the musical portrait of this iconoclastic composer. The recording is enhanced with the world premiere of Irish Melody, a long lost score that was recently rediscovered.

Following a recording of Beethoven's complete symphonies, which largely contributed to renew our vision of the early Romantic repertoire, Jordi Savall releases his first Schubert album. The Catalan maestro delivers a recording freed from the weight of past traditions to underline the dynamics, the section balance and the timbres that are required in this repertoire. Jordi Savall decided to entitle this album Transfiguration, because, as he explains, we are always astonished at Schubert's ability to reach this essentially internal and spiritual dimension, this kind of Transfiguration, which he simply sums up as follows in his diary in 1824: "My production is the result of my musical knowledge and my pain" or, to quote a poem he wrote a little earlier, "When I wanted to sing love, it turned into pain. When I wanted to sing pain, it turned into love."

Following the huge success of the Symphonies boxsets, and considering Jordi Savall's expertise in sacred music it was invevitable that he should record the Missa Solemnis. As in his previous Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn recordings, the Catalan maestro delivers a recording freed from the weight of past traditions to underline the dynamics, the section balance and the timbres that are required in this repertoire. He ignites the Promethean fire as imagined by Beethoven's demiurgic mind.

WAR & PEACE 1614-1714

In her first solo album as a singer and harpist, Arianna Savall introduces us to a repertoire from the medieval and Baroque periods performed with seven different historical harps. The music comes from Italy, France, and Spain, where the harp has held a prominent position in cultural life, and experienced a flowering of unique variety and beauty.

Classical Music

Johann Sebastian Bach composed six cantatas for the Christmas holidays in 1734, to have one performed for each particular holiday during services in the main churches of Leipzig, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. Both the narrative march of the Gospel and the tonality in which the musical framework was composed, give the cantatas a character of an autonomous cycle that Jordi Savall and his groups face for the first time

Cyrille Dubois is unstoppable: after two albums dedicated to Liszt and the Boulanger sisters, both acclaimed by the critics, and a flamboyant complete set of Faur� songs, the tenor is back to his preferred repertoire, the French art-song. He reunites with his accomplice, pianist Tristan Ra�s, to bring the Bordeaux composer Louis Beydts (1895-1953) out of oblivion, as most of his pieces are recorded here for the first time. From these miniatures, Cyrille Dubois draws the sap of the musician's art. A pure product of French hedonism, it is refined and elegant, with a generous vocality but also daring, for Beydts forbids himself nothing. Echoes of jazz and light music, of Hahn or Faur�, polymodality and polytonality, his melodies traverse everything between fantasy, humor and contemplation with supreme freedom. By transporting us into this singular universe, Cyrille Dubois establishes himself as an invaluable performer of the repertoire and a pioneer of French music, with an uncommon mastery of the combination of word and music.

17TH CENTURY MUSIC & DANCE FROM THE VIENNESE COURT

GRABMUSIK KV 42 / GALLIMATHIAS MUSICUM KV 32

A disc devoted to two very different, much-honored American composers Pianist Orli Shaham has an established and impressive international reputation and is admired for her interpretations of both standard and modern repertoire. Internationally renowned conductor David Robertson and 1984 Gold Medalist, Leeds Piano Competition, Jon Kimura Parker join Ms. Shaham for this recording. Includes two world premiere recordings!

Classical Music

Classical Music